Acts I (Lovers)

Acts I (Lovers)

(Wherein Job Is Ejaculated From The Sperm Whale)

She said there must be

some deep rooted trauma

in my past

for me to even make such a statement

and I said that she was probably right

but it didn't prove me wrong

in fact it just supported my argument

when I said

that Hemingway was right

when he compared love to a dung heap

upon which the cock crows

then I remember the slamming doors

the huffing and the puffing

that threatens to blow the house down

and I think that we

are like a different species

her and I

one of us quiet and dreaming

like the coral reef

the other loud and screaming

screaming at me

screaming at our child

screaming at car doors and windows and text messages

screaming at life

screaming at everything really

everything around her

a source of provocation

but she tells me all the time

that she is not an angry person

None of us are

I suppose

the animal,

it is inside us all

the cage,

it is our bodies

no one chooses to be this way

no one chooses to be locked up

no one chooses to be themselves

no one chooses the violence

of their bodies

it is a natural thing

puppets on a string

we dance the slow and awful waltz

to the time of a piano poorly played

missing all the notes at all the wrong times

as we try to sing along in the wrong key

no one chooses life

it is thrust upon us

an act of sexual violence

in which we play no part

this is the truth

that hammers our bodies

I watch her breasts rise and fall

huge pink areolas

for the tongue's taking

we are sharing a cigarette

she says she doesn't usually smoke

but with me

she's always doing things she doesn't do

I guess I'm just a bad habit

that people pick up that way

like cigarettes only easier to put down

or maybe I'm the one

that's hard to addict

it's hard to say

my eyes move down

to the patch between her legs

shaved into a slender charcoal line

like a landing strip

she's the first girl I've known

who shaved herself that way

and it brings out the animal in me

there's a look in her eyes

that says she wants to do it again

and I'm thinking

she is probably right

but it doesn't change things

nothing changes things

even change doesn't change things

a part of me

doesn't want to do it ever again

a part of me

sees sexual congress

as the ultimate act of selfishness

operating as it does

under the guise of altruism

it is a male thing I guess

even murder is more kind

by not pretending to be

something that it isn't

the act of sexual penetration

being the ultimate fuck you

that it is

every orgasm

like the emptying of a well

that leaves us parched

and waiting

the thirst that is never truly quenched

there is a violence

at the core of everything

that makes the world seem

more naturally abhorrent

more abominable

than even killers care for

it is the scream

at the heart of everything

to give even killers pause

it is what they look for

in the eyes of their victims

as they die

and never find

and don't want to when they do

it is the truth that ruins us all

a second, final time

the world is not what we would have it be

it is not what we think it is

and I look at her again

at the roundness of her ass

admiring its whiteness

as she turns on her stomach

to look at me

the trauma the violence

the scream at the heart of the world

raging inside of me

love and hate fused

in a single white hot

carnal moment

I can not resist

I hear the screaming

she hears the screaming

and it joins us now

we pretend that we can't hear it

but it has taken us anyway

unawares

unbidden

we are puppets on a string

and I look at her one last time

before I enter her again

not gentle this time

but hard

thrusting savagely

she doesn't seem to mind

the animal again

the violence

the primal scream at the heart of everything

just as nature intended

and it frightens me again

just as it always has

it exhausts us both

and rolling on our sides

we go back to the place we came from

knowing

always knowing

that there is a separation

between us all

that can not be breached

our bodies are cages

to which no one

not lovers not even love itself

can hold the the keys

the keys that jingle and jangle

just out of arm's length

eternally, like a punishment,

a sentence,

the bars of our flesh

simply do not yield

only oblivion can set us free

and as I slip into dream

where all past lovers merge

into a single faceless creature,

that single undifferentiated primal force,

I ponder once again this thing

that is the truth of us.

• 12/14/15