XIII

The bartender stood playing with her black
+++++++Hair, combing it across bare tattooed shoulders.
+++++++Too early yet for college kids to pack
+++++++The smoky booths and beer-soaked rugs, some older
Drunks nursed the happy hour specials. When I told her
+++++++Why I’d come, she just held a Sharpie out,
+++++++And said, “The men’s room’s by the smokes,” not colder
+++++++But less surprised than you would think. The grout
And tiles were flecked like the scales on a trout
+++++++Starved in a murky tank, and, on the wall,
+++++++In black caps: my name and failings all spelled out.
+++++++I scored the marker through her words, so all
Was wiped out with my strokes. When it was done,
+++++++Our lines were sealed in that dark block as one.

XIV

It will not wash away: all that once flicked
+++++++The fine mesh of the nerves or lured my eye
+++++++As if it were a tongue to lick and lick
+++++++Her tits, the sleek recess between her thighs.
Left blinking at her absence, I have tried
+++++++To think, “If I’d done this . . .” or “If she’d just . . .”
+++++++As if this were a story, not a lie,
+++++++In which a chaptered logic tells what must,
Must not, or may, unfold. The law of lust
+++++++Knows nothing of all this; says that the shape
+++++++Our lives may seem to take—crumbles to dust
+++++++At the hot breath of chance upon our nape.
All knowledge, judgment burns within its fire;
+++++++It leaves us just the hard stone of desire.