Venture.

Reborn out of water's steaming fingers, just below boiling, mother's arms, liquid strength, wiped clear the tears, the snot webbed across the chin, dipping into the crevices of shoulder, armpit, crooked knee, clean, sparkling, calmed, no more hysteria of bleak inevitable harsh blunt truth, that you don't love me, that you never will, I was tired, the rough edges of my bones crackling with pain, now muted to soft worn glow, soft from soaking in the steam, soft bone, soft heart, thinking about all the little tricks you played to make me laugh, an infant at your funny faces, it made me sore, a lover forced to fight, I only want to be yours again, yours once more, yours for once, unconditionally, without expectation of gratitude, without expectation of life in the next breath.

And what were we going to do in Liberia anyway? Hunt lions, sip mint juleps, saunter about in the khaki sand garb of our imperial masters, our great-grandmother's rapists, our long-gone patriarchs?

Sweet thought, you'd asked me to go with you. Romantic expanse of new horizons, to be gazed upon by your eyes and mine. Of course I'd go, wherever, whenever. Victim, victor, ventriloquized body, we always did interesting things. Vegas in vernal, venereal undertones, vicious viscosity, violent virulence. I'm glad we were more than dinner and a movie, long walks on the beach, flowers and champagne. Though all of that couldn't have hurt.

Would have helped, actually. 24-hour diners, scene of the crime, the pancakes were curiously salty. He had a fake mustache and fucked his girl twice a week. A wholesome white boy actually, with a newly acquired kinky streak. How often do you do it? I'm the wrong guy to ask, he said. The other one smirked, Seven times a day, before my accident. His eyes glinting, sharp, predatory, except creased in genuine amusement. We finished our meals on his dime, expressing how sorry we were for his broken hip, his recently dead father.

Red

After Mary fished the ring out of Raph's pockets
and put it on nodding yes with two squeezed tears
rolling down her cheeks, I found a legion more
dripping off my face onto the mountains of paperwork
I've come to accrue these past weeks, playing
secretary to you instead. Do you know what
diluvian means? Do you know what real means?
You laugh. There's no use crying over Latin.

2am, two summers ago we traipsed
drunk down Malcolm Avenue towards your
old apartment in pitch dark
except for the occasional triggered garage lights,
for once, my hand in yours, and even then I wondered
how I would remember this night, your gray coat,
Nazi-swastikas lining the bases of antique streetlamps,
Marilyn Monroe buried a few blocks away,
my hand still in yours, a miracle,
perhaps you'd forgotten it was there altogether.

Even as you slept last night, I could not say
to your steady heaving shoulder
the words that you detest so much
burning to catapult from between
my clamped lips, for fear you'd wake
in disgust and leave. Lover, I love you.
The silence poisons me. And you and I know:
I'm not crazy.