You shouldn’t worry baby boy
lips still hours away
from shame or consequence
You say you’re a grown-up
now and you can want whatever you want
and if you want
this swallow him within your
slipping minutes
when the auto park
just beyond these
fortress walls sits quietly in repose its
steel skeletons
grinding night between their teeth
a cemetery
filled with the dawn-bleached bones
that sooner or later
you’ll weave through like contrails across
blue bruise of sky
The morning will shiver in protest
when you say goodbye
without a sound instead with looks
of pang or envy
but for now the air is thick in your lungs
the room vivisected
by a disco ball’s providential
eye and all around you are
the faces of men you’ve come to memorize
the way an apostle
would commit his sacred texts to heart
If you want this
and who here is above wanting
you must rest
your hand on the small of his back
that same skin
which soon will unravel with steam
warm clouds
lifting from his body in that instant
when frost
first strikes heat those seconds
where your names
will not matter below the
impish creep of horizon’s blade
your bodies possessed even then
by the bass
and the throbbing puncture
of party-favored mania
scored by the key in any given
bathroom stall
You shouldn’t worry because
no one is dying
tonight at least no more than
should be expected as the dark
peels away like a soiled bandage
You are too young
still to worry about what you can’t control
about what comes after or
next you see that is the langue of experience
and baby boy
who are you to pick up such a tongue so soon
Now you know what
you want even if you cannot name it
so you pull him
into your trembling mouth’s
ready chamber you
shake your limbs in ritual when
at last the climax
arrives amidst that throng that great spasm
that panicked
and orgiastic shedding of doubt
among the sweat-drenched
congregation wearing their pained masks of pleasure
Let it sink into the floor
flood the catacombs below your feet
where men have spent
all night escaping what they’ve come
to expect
If you mean it throw your stumbling weight
into the heavy doors
the bottom of your shoes slick with
a party’s afterbirth
Slip into day’s narrow path
the wrath of waking sunlight
Baby boy forget how winter burrows
beneath the skin
let your mouth hang open with
that uncertain
steadiness just this once
a devouring gasp
This morning is nothing more than
early-bird traffic and
the frost’s filed teeth and the truth that
you may never see
another quite like it for as long as you search
this city’s streets but
baby boy show him with the last
swell of your tongue
now so practiced in this carnivorous dance
that this cannot last
forever Prove to him you know
that is the point
