Don't you want a poem

that will just

give it to you

that will undo your

fastenings with its teeth

and

lay you

out like it was murdering you

when really it was making you live?

After the reading is done

it will take maybe twenty minutes

for you to be able to move again

just lying there with the volume

spread open

on your chest: its cover,

jacket removed, moving

in time with your breath

A poem where

afterward you need a cigarette

to escort you back to the world

outside its lines because you

came that close to forgetting

that people had needs at all

And maybe the next morning

when you come back

to its pages the passion

will have dwindled some

it will seem somehow tired

in the light, its

movements and print both

a little less bold

But when you read it

(now at your desk

with your glasses on)

it still reads you back

with a tenderness

and understanding

that was absent in

the lustful evening

and you will maybe think

it's better that way: to be

who you are in its company, to have

the poem see you hungry and wanting

but still know exactly what to say.