i don't want your beauty
your heart too is yours to keep
a soul cannot be stolen by
a lover

warm presence simple and
      temporary

shared experiential truths
like facts of physics
endlessly explored
constantly expanded

generations will know and
discover elements of your
loveliness
i live for shared knowledge
of this instant

flashes of whirring passion
not meant for any museum
never to be published in a
book of science

sequestered in this present
moments
mutual sighs

Poems pounded down like thumping hooves,
staccato oak leaves, slapped paper,
the all-importance of the words
a bond, a liturgy sticking the nuance
of self to your soil . . . even though you were
never meant to be here for long, for long.

You knew this by the way the poems pounded
down like your hand slapping the carpet
when the sloe gin has taken your presence
on another slippery expedition of mortality;
it's clear the poems do not pound the words pulped
of many other poets, flouncing their fears forward
on paper held like a ticket, a ticket.

The very thing that keeps you here
also makes you flirt with another way,
yet you fear there may not be an exact torrent
of poems there (the only way to pound the blood,
the only way to properly shake the fabric of death)
and if there's a chance the poems only pound
on this side, this side, can this be why
only a handful of poets come this close to the kill?
Poems must continue to pound, you understand,
even as you caress another way to compose yourself.