Miles

MILES

By Yclept © 2004

Miles
takes me to the place where
I would be, up
there in lotusland, up
there in some unplumbed
space, some

fantasy of ‘ere days when
fish were jumpin’, yeah
they were
jumpin’

and the livin’ was fat and large and
easy

and I know there are others
here
who will lay easy with me, lay
easy with me on a rainy
Sunday afternoon, gin
bottle in hand, lay
easy while I trace
whorls over the goosebumpy, girls

are like that, goosebumpy sometimes in the rainy the
fingertouch so electric, I
love this, this
fingertouch, the
giggle and the sigh, the
easy moan the
hiss of sterterous breath on my cheek the
easy touch of finger to skin, I

love to touch the whorls of one
palp
to one little bumpy goosenub and
feel the capacitive
transfer the
spark, here

in Chicago it’s like that in winter, the
room so dry that every
touch
lights up the room in
blue twitches, we

sit on Friday night at the Drake and they
bring out those
big silver salvers, loaded
with wings and such and
we drink Heinekens until
she asks for Sancerre and we
harden up a little but
meantime I’m eyeing
those Marshall Field matrons
in from Evanston and
not actually looking, but
showing just that white sliver, that
white sliver above the stocking, that
yearning eye-pull, they
affect disdain but
perhaps dampen a little at times as
they perceive the guilty glance the
flirtatious smirk though
they take no prisoners they

want a special lover, someone a little
above the battle, someone
quite discreet with that Euro-edge, that
low-key eyefuck that may
or may not

We
stagger out in the sere
stumbling over to that North Lincoln
walkup, that
little refuge, I

feel the fulsomeness of my
North Face parka which
courtesy demands I rip off to
wrap her shoulders the
night is cruel off Lake Michigan and
we scamper and laugh I
consider pushing her down in the snow and
snoogling her but
we are back, we are
there at the door and the key scribbles and scrabbles and
finally goes in

She seems amazed when the door
falls open, we
greet the dark with a laugh and
light a candle and are
to drunk to care that soon the
landlady will
beat her ceiling with her
witchy broom handle we

have descended into jungle fucking with
no preliminaries—how coarse we
might at least have nubble kissed each other, nubbled and
nibbled each other, you
know how that works—those laughy flirty kisses you
try to start petting but you
laugh too much, cute little
nibbly kisses and giggles, it’s
so nice when it goes down that way but
everything is to its nature you
just do
what you do at any moment in the dream the
lovely soft night in the sere winter, the
darkling time……………

II

Morning is gradual
consciousness
raising itself to day to
unsure Sunday, the skanky
brush of slickskin on slick
skin, the
early morning woody coupling we
cry out for the shower we need but
can’t help ourselves, sluts that we are, sluts
to the dream, the skanky dream of Sunday, we
wonder if Church is an option but
it’s too late now almost
noon and the

gin bottle salves, we

do make it to the flowing nectar, the
warm, the
oily flow, the
nepenthe of the heat, the
easy grace of holding here, I

love her just as much or more
than I did last night which
is always a good sign we
need a cab now to
get back to the Drake, to
get our lips around that
glorious brunch and I feel

the pregnancy of platinum in my
wallet, the
ease of
anything we want, anything
which becomes Puligny Montrachet, easing onto the palate, the
lovely sounds and giggles she makes beside me, the
way way sweet, the
way way sweet eye-coupling here the
lovely love the
lovely and

later
back at North Lincoln it’s
way Miles, way trumpet and Wayne
Shorter and
Herbie Hancock and it gets dark so early that we
light candles again and smooch, too
wasted to make yet more babies, too
easy to bother fucking, who
cares any more I

see her framed in one of those 19th
century vignettes, Blanche

Barton, I

bought a richly-tooled family
Bible once
on Bank Street in Ottawa and
inside was a cardboard
backing to an oval
vignette of Blanch Barton, my
dearly loved niece the invocation read, she
was lovely in her prim girlishness, her
hair tight in a bun her
glasses thin steel-
rimmed, her
white blouse buttoned to the neck and she had
child breasts only and I wept
for her, wept
for Blanche, wept
because the note said 1905 and
she looked 20, I
thought she must be dead I
wondered if I could exhume her from the grave and see just once more

that beauty captured in a frame so long
ago

but these thoughts dog me always and
make me mad, I
cannot be satisfied at all and
this is the pain that deals drear to me
even as I hew to her, my
Chicago girl, I
find that this
endless drunken fucking makes me weak and I
gradually detach and
withdraw and distance myself and
fly back to somewhere or
everywhere and dis-engage and cannot
go back, I

will not ever find the love I need, I
will not find easy Grace that lasts, I
will not be shrived and whole, there
is nothing that I need or want and yet I
need so much, I
yearn to know what it is I
need, I fear

that no one will hold me when I am old
and full of sleep and lassitude and
not myself really, not
the loving touch I was in the night to so many, to
so many

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