All The Lovers Are Mine

AND ALL THE LOVERS ARE MINE I They gagged my lovers gagged from forcing too much flesh into their mouths. During the hungry nights their vaginas became sepulchres my penis anticipating the fatal wound deposited dust. And in the morning we buried nothing nothing at all even the worms made an outcry at our intrusion.

II It was the warm nights warm enough to walk breast-free your kisses meant more to me than the answers to unanswerable questions. All the length of the shore the waves sang canticles for your approach my hands trembled daring not to touch your hair fearing I would shatter the moon-christened strands and the water claim them as evidence of hope for lost sailors.

III Remember the game-days the day I challenged scientific knowledge by attempting to count every pore on your body carefully as a nun fingers her rosary and when I reached your thighs BAM! all the plastic monkeys were cast from the timed catapult on your hope chest.

IV I called you Sister of the Sun. Every dawn I mistook for you. Every day I watched you walk from work my eyes attempting to lift your skirt just a shade higher but you were elusive water grasped in a fist. I went home every night preserving your dampness on my fingers. "The fool," I heard a friend say, "touches nothing."

V The first time I met you was in the third line of a poem. I became a witness for your flesh at intellectual dissections. One night I planned to assault the city with Xeroxed pages pinned to every tree and telephone pole but poets can be selfish. I carried you into sleep like a prayer every night. It was six months later the page that held you became bitter of my knowledge and ran off with a delicate breeze.

VI And you my dreamer when you carried my palm-prints on your breasts and offered them to the fortune-teller for explanations found that my life-line ran the length of your body. Falling into my arms like an empire of glory your eyes shining diplomas of ultimate victory you said, "See! We are lovers forever. It is written." Naomi, where are you?

VII I remember reading of your death on page five how the water filled you soft as sleep. We hadn't loved for two years or so. I wanted never to write a poem with death involved. I wanted forever to move holding one hand after another lips to feed me flesh for comfort but now with you gone there is a gap in my history which nothing can fill even if I were to involve death.

VIII How long has it been since we shared hands and lilacs? How long has it been? How long shall it be? Somewhere under the snow our secret energy is spawning buds of light from a spring sun. How long shall it be before the lovers rise in green glory? How long shall it be until all the lovers are mine?