Originally appeared in Unit Circle #5

Lovely bob and him so warm; him so firm
and rudely male - yet softer yet in form
of hand and tone of voice that sets our blood
to singing in our ears of bob to bob.
If that occur which must needs be that bob
depart from flesh-life, violently rent
from tissued transaction (his perfections
would require no less that age should not
defile a form of porportions as
his are - but see that he's removed therefrom
that we may share in memories only
the triumphs of genetic art that are
the person-thing of our gentle bob)

If bob were but cold corpse, dead flesh, road-kill
en-wombed in the warm ground (vapors expatiate);
His form and order of male flesh turned
back to the soils where ere' he proposed -
(i imagine him done in in a bar-fight
Romance; the passive, disputed object
of limitless male appetite and
the deformations of a proper need;
Smoky bar midst smoky cold night;
Boys in their leathers and khakis.
Boys in their steel-toes; stubble-headed
warriors of anonymous, men's room
encounters; moments of release against
the relentlessness of easy living;
commerce in soft cavities; explosions
upon a horizon of male need.
Courting bob contenders engage; enrage.
bob taken down with edge of bottle-glass
and they cry: None shall have him, if not I!
His blood from mouth of wound anoints apostl's
of a brave new faith; consecrates killers.
Crimes of passion recognized as above
the laws of plain boys and family men)

Given these things that bob be lost to warmth
of maul and probe and spasms for reply:
i'd burrow with hands the earth where
under conducts the business that will
disorganize this firm physique and make
of bob a formless thing - how shall love hinge?
On what ground love, if love's no solid thing?
Love requires object, if love is to be love.
An indigent's grave i dig the ground that
i may bathe and luxuriate
in the liquidity and settl'd
soils that once were the mass that i kissed
as bob, and responded as bob-object.
i shall have him - he shall be mine; And we
two shall become as one as we are joined
in wallowing warm communion.

Unit Circle Poetry