Sleeping Bacchante

On Watching You Sleep After the Bacchanal
Sated satyr, I sit and watch soft breasts
rise and fall with your dreams’ rhythms, ponder
love’s mysteries in my wine haze, wander
my own wilderness spent, drunk, and undressed
from wild rides through vineyards . . . You were impressed
with—what?—you fell giggling to lie under
my lust’s burning, ripe and lusty, wonder
of youth [...]

Bondage Love

These Bonds of Love
He’s the archetypical hero. She
always bound by chains only he can break.
It raises questions: Who bound her, what rake
or tyrant leaves a naked woman free
to run naked in chains? Why from the sea;
always an ocean journey, seaside jailbreak
as though one could find bound girls for the sake
of cruising any coast . . [...]

Age & Beauty

Too Long I Left You Waiting
We met beside the well outside that town
down by the river; I, pale mockery
of a poet, you tall in flowing gown
and fine leather sandals. My lechery
is at least sincere . . . your beauty astounds
me even now, your sweet melancholy
plucks this harp that is my poet’s heart
and calls me lines [...]

Love Myth

Another Myth of Love
Desire is love’s seed, they said, but I knew
better even as I planted deep my
seed. Their infertile hearts desired lust’s cry
of carnal longing, and nothing more. Few
have learned as we have learned, love, and lust, too,
are but fires within our hearts and selves. Try
as we might, they smolder and never die
while we [...]

Desert Nude

Wandering in the Wilderness . . .
It was a boyhood fantasy, coming
across a bare-breasted beauty in some
deserted place where she might rely on me
to rescue her, and her all willing
to reward my capable action with
tenderness and something undefined . . .
 
But now a man, I find myself here
in this deserted place, with this bare-
breasted young [...]

Ulysses

After Twenty Years Estranged
You wouldn’t believe, Penelope, things I’ve seen;
I barely believe myself. Such wonders in the wide,
wild world. But no beauty above your own, greater
now even than when I left, unwilling, to tear down
walls at Troy and slaughter hapless men whose
only sin was to raise a sword or spear against me.
But even after, I [...]

Wild

 
My Wild Love
Must have been the wine . . . can’t seem to recall
how I found you there, lying naked on
a spread out leopard skin, or at least
something patterned that way. Oh, and that
convenient golden sash. But mostly
I recall the haunting challenge of boredom
in bedroom eyes, at once sad and longing.
The pout of your [...]

The Libertarian

Libidinous Liberty
Some called him rogue, others less courteous
names. Some compared him to Don Juan,
others Don Juan to him. Wine, women,
song and the never-ending beauty of roses
he thought were the sole lusts of life.
The hunt is not for the kill, but for the hunt.
He delighted in catching, but only having
fully experienced the luscious, heady
drunkenness of the [...]

For mysoul

Forever Young
Yes. I was Pan. Forever
young, a youth forever.
Until my back went out,
and white hair snuck in
to salt sandy hair and beard
and the gut-wrenching shock
of that first insurance premium
with a new driver, our second son,
increasing it near ten-fold.
 
Yes. I was of the Cult
of Youth, forever young.
Until I found direction
and learned enough to teach
and was forced [...]