New Endymion

She visits still too much, dressed in aromas

of fir needles, mango, mold: I still get lost

knowing she’s close, me not getting younger

or more conscious. Sometimes I fantasticate

I’m broad awake: her witchy presence waits

for me to jump into her arms, but then she’s just

an incoherent ache in sleep’s freaked scenes.

I feel her frosty nitrogenous hands and wrists

vaporing nooses around my head and feet

and genitals, conjuring my drab hair

into a party bowl of oiled, desirable locks.

She makes me nervous, but what would I do

without her? So long as I can’t have her,

I want her and this alarming manic frequency.

Then again, who wants to wake to change,

its pulped, smelly suit of meat, drawing flies?

My night-watch hot girl, moon-maiden, mom,

let me get just one night’s sleep without regret,

released from your foxy ticklish fondlings,

your latest smell of windblown fresh-cut grass.

Theatre of the Sublime