Children in the Morning

Watch how I can make us appear,

carved onto the side of the carton.

Touch the triple-bypass scar.

Gone missing as much as rancid.

We're two boy-size holes

reaching into each other for cream.

A comet of salvia down from Orion's.

When you take the fetal position on my couch

I wince; your DRI FIT socks, your laundered crotch.

I'm prone to making molehills out of molehills,

eager to accept a thing as it exists to exclude me:

in twee eddies of self-abnegation I delay the itch.

You're in my arms now, closer than glass.

You've pruned your soul so it's smooth to the touch.

You're the one who makes mine gnash out, loll back.

Your beauty is how you remind me of the dead.

That summer night you arched your back to

laugh, turned Suzanne into a joke,

our joke, and the moon coming in cartoon light:

and you think maybe you'll truss him

for he's touched your stupid body with his mind