D E S I R E

I

Every now and then, I am reminded, when
happiness or comfort become too accessible
a commodity, that poetry must portray the
suffering of real poets; dreams must die
flesh must rend, the mind molt anxiety
in the open-winged and -wounded awareness of EVERY
goddam lucid, sensitive thought flying through
its crenellated, soft-textured universe, so a soul can
stew in the stagnant broth of its purgatorial pond
collecting the run-off from the heart broken once, twice
OK three times, in a lifetime, which, at age 40, is probably
only half a lifetime—Oh, God! and you ask me not to
rhyme and make love with my words...

II

Even the cold astronomers knew enough
to call their creation myth the Big Bang
and that alliteration is the start of a fertile
poem of sensuality our deep space probes and Hubble
telescope have been monitoring for years now.
But they are really looking for Heaven, or Love, because
the universe is not neutral: the absence of heat is cold—
you feel either one, you must; and we dream of aliens
visiting with their secrets of salvation since Jesus on the
cross is too religious for some, yet we cannot even land
all of our robot crafts on Mars successfully to check the
bacterial possibility of primordial sniffs of life on our close
neighboring heavenly body...

III

Nobody wants to live and die alone in loneliness, we
would instead make love to ourselves and splash our egos
with the odorless elixir of lies; we are survivors, you know
dragging through the streets of our daily lives the false gods
of resurrection and hope, especially when the Dow and Nasdaq
are moving moving moving, and the ugly insurance license
kept crumbled in my back pocket is a love letter with which
I neuron myself into reality when the mortgage and car payments
are due, or my daughter How cute! How cute! has a deflated
soccer ball, or the son overweight with the obsessive-compulsive
urges of undiagnosed habits has ripped his husky pants again
and my poor wife and mother of all that is blessing and beneficence
needs that weekend vacation...

IV

Oh! that damn $10 cologne was on sale anyway, and No!
I did not think that would help me get SOME, but
Hey! I have a lot of this lush liquid I could spray all over
the evidence of my humble life—Jealous yet? Words, huh?
Words Words Words ejaculated for you, but no longer yours
and yet not mine either. Words like the absence of cold, creating
brilliant, heated supernovae of Love and lovers, real closing couplets—
I mean close couples—(that was a Freudian) big-banging on the doors
of Heaven for passion through the night and into morning...

V

I drip with desire like morning's fresh dew
Bled to the bone by these bare thoughts of you...

- Michael D. Petti

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