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 [...]

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 [...]

Slaves to Passion

Why Buy?
Never really understood the allure
of owning another person; why want
a slave? Even for an hour? What impure
impulse to wish such power, wish to flaunt
one’s need for control by means of coin when
will alone won’t suffice? Coercion won’t
fulfill that wish for interdependence,
nor will all your money buy love—what whores
sell is nothing but release, liberation
from relationship [...]

Drowned in Beauty

I Almost Drowned
Spring, and the water lilies were in bloom,
so I took my Grecian urn down pondside
to fill with water for my hyacinths
and Labradors. What a delight to find
seven maids swimming naked and brazen
in spring’s mad equinox. And yet . . . oh pale-
fleshed goddesses, how can mortal choose one
beauty’s epitome from others? I
could not! [...]

Swimmer

Swimming Choppy Seas
It was calm when first I set out to swim,
but then Aeolus let loose his howling
winds and waves rose. Swimming against currents,
strength nearly spent, I spied you chained to stone
and waiting as though sacrificed to some
Kraken or stormgod. Weeping, naked, you
called out against the sky, or some father
coward enough to forsake you. And [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]