The king’s court, the killing floor.
The task I have is my undoing.

Desire beyond, human-imal it seems,
that whispered body-being. You.

Has my face caught up with, surpassed, my age?

In Haiti, Port-au-Prince, a man walked up and down the
         school hallways carrying a bull
   whip.

One night, ship’s ball, a party
For those not seasick. And you danced,
Oh how you danced!

I imagine our dead
lived only for this

The house of the wooden roof
hunkers in the forest’s heart.

Flailing boughs, coral lime in the wind and verdure.

everywhere, fern fronds, skunks, day lilies, badgers going along silently, and the unruled land goes along too

Like Casanova, you made love to trouble, cruising
for gondoliers, the thrust of the oar, desire and pursuit.