Send me to the moon – Conchitina Cruz elsewhere held and lingered
I have no time for seeming,
said the poet to his mistress, in summer heat,
in distress, on his knees, to impress,
say I to you now, my one
and one again, beyond question, this moment,
my shaky fact and sweeping statement,
the sting of your wandering eye gone
in a blink, the stink of your sin dismissed
in a split-second, no longer pissed, no longer dissed by my friends—this heart
sought and bought, this mind blundered
and plundered of reason.
What to mend in this season, swell heaven, my body swells
in the theory of your touch,
my crotch restless and rootless without the thrill
of your skill,
ever faithful, ever loyal
to none and all, every fall a road to get back on
again. After all, who wants to remain
unsullied, my precious umlaut and ampersand,
my limbs curling in letters yet to be written
with you, who wouldn’t melt in the face
of your face, unkempt—Why attempt to leave you be,
a missed opportunity?
If I may, dear player,
my favorite bullshitter, let me say
steer clear of those women, proud in their heels,
their store-bought feminism, and love me
instead, mousy-haired and well-read,
able to read genre for your sake,
able to take slasher in your company.
Lay down your arms where I can
stay in them and send me to the moon, forget the freaks
we ran away from one afternoon by the library, the guard whistling in the hall,
the howl and swagger and the fall—
Haven’t we all made that jump? Haven’t we all heard
the plunk, the mere grunt of you,
the mere spunk of you, reeking of musk
while teaching me physics, crawling down the road piss drunk
at 3 am, plastered and master
to none, pushing my head down in cars all over town—
Don’t we all stoop and deliver?
And so, what now, hopping from bed to bed, all red with rage,
the age of the wine on the label tossed
in the wastebasket, the taste
of it all, the last of it all, the pale madness of this song,
my thong tugged at again
by your wandering fingers, still smelling of
another sweet wonder—Don’t we all
have another? Where are my fangs?
Where are my pangs of guilt for my sins, where the wince
in the eternal threat of end, how mend the night’s
idiosyncrasy, the spittoon in the fantasy
of ordinary life, your wife,
my darling nonbeliever, my unwarranted claim.
What fame do I have now, possessing you
in these words,
the lie almost triumphant, ecstatic,
unrepentant. Sweet fever, sweet being,
lie down with me now,
in the middle of this heat, this summer,
now that, now long ago, when we were mad,
we said yes, we were convinced,
never mind what happened since.