The Practice

When it is
                  after midnight
and I am
                  alone
when I am
                  honest with myself

I take my cynic by the hand and tuck her in.

There is then my cup of coffee and this collage:

     your body
                                 something I once wrote
                     her body
maitri
         yellow walls

beautiful, [to follow], starved in an open grave, purple electric, warm and free

"... is a placeholder term for the thing I so want which will complete..."

I deny myself-- please,
I do need your permission--

it is no mere term and it is no term

it is a practice
                            and I need your permission

to do it.

Let us consent
                              her body
let us consent to
this practice which we afraid do want.

The temple of my imagination
                      suffused with purple electric-- think

about the world like that
                  not the world but this
                                                              only

a yellow room and us practicing there-

and then there you are again
because I am a string of hypocrisies
              if I am

so, I am not.
                       except nows

        when poetry