SORRY I MISUNDERSTOOD YOU

The way some people shape themselves for other
people, like water shapes itself for any vessel
or goes to bed with any river, is enough to catapult

Pride into Too Simple’s toilet. Temperature
too can be conducted through the skin of others,
leaving but a trace of self as scummy surface.

Only the retreat of sleep gifts it back, a lovely alone
zone when you are yourself even if someone else is
on top of you. But sleep’s a nightly mold broken

by alarm: upon waking, you must reconfigure elbows
id and superduperego to the glassy fragile outline
of your companion for the daily dance of handle-with-care.

A glass-break sensor blinks above every soulless window
of the soul. Butterfly kiss of eyelash, calculus
of seduction. We get broke like every headstrong horse,

sell-outs for feedbag and stable. Seeds leap off trees
in search of children and every son’s an extension
of his father’s Johnson, out there dicking around,

smelling for some fresh field to plow. Okay, it’s all
survival. Is that what you want me to say? I’ll say
it: lemmings, elephants, executives, escorts—salmon

wriggling upstream. You can curve yourself into a spoon
for his back or pretzel yourself to his logic, the better
to slide yourself into his genes. Docking maneuver

of the everyday, with whiplash lipstick applied to balm
expectation. Okay okay, you’ve got other fry to fry.
You’ll never miss the water till the well runs dry.