Introductions were moments
beaded on the string of bars,
steady as metronome for months

clutch beer, light cigarette, speak

I remembered your name,
let you say it again and offered
only hand at first
but I am a detour flashing green light go,
hesitation mangled between tire and gravel.
So here is us,
useful as an olive tree
at someone’s party in Mission Hill.
There is an evacuation occurring in my cock.
Millions of potential accidents
escaping cul-de-sac of skin,
avoiding Tartarus.
The floor beneath our feet,
someone’s roof
burns… is about to
open up and say     boys keep swingin’.

You have pulled the fire alarm
and rocked me against the cool of the bathroom floor
until the number of tiles my body covered
could be counted on skin.

The grid on my arms and back
marking dance steps for the siege of desire
kicking its heels up my spine.

We move as deliberately as the Earth.

Chaos given direction
(you)
rain soaked streets, salt, wet denim,
the reason night falls.

Eros has slipped from Olympus
and after sufficient time in tattoo parlors
and dancing in bars where I hunt
       he gives himself a name,
              whispers it to me like a question
               until we are knocking shampoo bottles from shelves
holding on to the faucet for leverage
and there is water
the water is on somewhere

somewhere          there is water running.

It beads on your skin like a windshield
driving hard through human traffic
until we find the off ramp.

This is where we’ll be tonight.

Knees pressed to cold tiles.
Hands gripping hips to know
what moves at ground speed.
Mouths working in dervish wet prayer
with no emergency brake for earth
no pull over lane for solicited response of genitalia.
Roving relief maps with teeth and pre-cum,
you’ve made it to the creases in my stomach
            stirred marrow of bone
so yeah…           I’ll burn this city with you
                                warm my body by the heat
                                     before placing it next to yours.

You know I’m a tit suckling fool for the dirty, the vain,
so put my back to the wall
                 I’ll put the wink back in the moon
her gravity letting my fingers fall
to find the damp side streets or your hair.
My hands beg you to find a slower song
but you are urgent
fated
ordained by the spilled contents of a medicine cabinet
and a towel rack ripped from the wall.
The skin on your arms and back
bound so tightly that I can almost see through it
/a parchment veneer sheathing your working parts/
makes me wonder how much blood it takes
to fill you up

to keep you hard.

You look up.
The smell of weather and city hits me like silence.

I would skin knees for you.

This is where will be tonight.
Making a model of lovers taking constant form,
clinging to the idea that if we move hard enough
we can make sense of the bullshit outside this door
but somewhere there is water running,
urging through pipes
and steaming the broken mirror.
I follow your hands beneath my shirt,
hoping to find it,
       the only excuse I can think of for this,
an arrow jutting from my punctured flesh
               bringing the outside in
/and I think, Cupid, you fucker/
until I lose reasoning in the moats of your iris
take steps with the drawbridge of your mouth
and invent new ways to scale your walls
to get inside.
Someone is knocking.

 

© 2007 James Caroline - Contributor's Bio