His face was a wall I passed daily and gave no notice,
innocent of the exotic mind behind it.
One day the wall gapped open, and I glimpsed green.
Ever since I've searched with blind hands to find that gate again.

Shatter glass and sparkle, semiprecious mortal loves
bacchanal of asceticism
those hypogonadal Div School boys
want their madonnas to tear their senses from them.

He might have taught me to love beauty for beauty's sake,
had I not found his soul more moving still:
focussing light, a crystalline heart
through which thought streamed unadulterated.

You cool blue early period pieces
you untried saplings
I will step into your breach
your terror and your sweet dream
make you move to music you can't hear yourself
I will undo you.

Deaf to intonation and inflection,
he was born with clear eyes
so that he alone could see
the patterns in gravel that turn the sand to glass.

Uisgebaugh, the grape, the rye
the bursting of neurons
and all those angels dancing on one electrode
the lines of combination emanating from one nitrogen blue nidus
a countable infinity

I should have been born a son of scholars and barrel-chested peasants,
except I was made Tiresias, to recognize him.
Though he will see the face of God,
it is I who know the heart of man.
I will be taken back to my fathers,
held close to their chests,
while he has no father on earth in whose arms to die.

So light her touch
so soft her tongue
blue-veined ankles
vellum skin
cover her mouth with yours
pin her to the sheets
unleash in her the riot in you
make her feel what you feel
make her twist under your hand
till she bursts like a muscat
with a sweeter taste than summer

On the day I step from the balcony,
on the day I yield to the sea,
I will remember (beast that I am)
I was more of a man than he.