IT WAS THAT LIGHT
you showed me. I bathed
in your bay windows.

There was that motion
pelting against glass,
so I held you.

But now I look up
from a cement frieze
to a building's anonymity.

I conjure images as memory,
but I have kept my light.
Sex is a meditation.

If I were never to touch
a finger to it, would it
be enough to go on?

My body aches
to open up to your opening,
a camellia, but I am clay,

throwing myself on people,
escaping with food and drugs.
The mirror gave me a skull

by candlelight,
and when I came closer,
I saw a fierce mask.

Like the phosphorescent owl
on the mantel, it glowed,
that light.

In order to be mortal,
I must be capable of dying.

--David Joseph