Translations from the Flesh

95% of Love Is Half of What You Want

7 95% of love is half of What You Want And there you are, shaking your maracas In a backless dress. And here I am, Slash pockets and a center vent, cool As that blue-cut zircon nesting in The small white hollow of your throat. Dust on the dance floor wheels and frets Like the atoms of my appetite, And I can feel the friction: heat Sliding up through my shoes; Sizzle of silk from your seesaw hips. Light drifts around us like the grain Of old photographs, and we pose In a slow pivot and swoop, Acrobats of the loose erotic, Revels in the blind unraveling. Death makes it all more desperate, More sweet: the density of flesh Weakened by desire, giving way To the plunge and flow, welcoming Whatever comes to the wet thresholds. My muse goes naked to the bone And takes her vinegar straight. But you want the soul of roses, Marrow of the mind, beyond these Crude codes of dirt and darkness. And you tell me: Fool, Forget the guzzle and the bungalows, The mad reversion to the mean; I don’t believe in numbers over two Or zero at the breaking point. And so we spin, like straw into gold, Smoothing our steps past 8 Blister and gristle: me with a tongue Cured in black smoke, and you cresting At the pleasure of the moon. ...