The Old Shell Game
All these calisthenic nights,
olympic fun in bed,
in the red lamplight,
changing changling faces
fascinated by my decathalon sense of sex.
The old shell game, baby,
fricating flesh together,
tongues pretzeled into holes
no mother ever knew.
Musical kamady-sutra nightly
on the chandeliers.
Oh it’s my body.
Without you, once again, it’s my body.
And it’s their bodies
in these shells so fit for games,
biceped, bearded, buttocked to fit
in two-fisted love,
reeling in the terminal encounters
of glorious flesh,
in the glorious encounters
of terminal flesh.
Wrestlers of perfect form
choreographed in classic holds,
ah yes, and yes again, to our bodies;
but behind their eyes,
but behind my eyes
the torch of passion lights, flares, passes,
so laid back together,
our bodies sated,
I wait for his warm hand
to cup my cool left cheek
in your old accustomed way,
but he is he
and I’ve sated him.
He drowzes.
I turn to watch his face,
but his face is not your face,
after the heated calisthenics of these olympics,
this oldest shell game on earth.
He falls back into his private self
(What was his name again?)
unlike you and I when we were us
falling together afterwards
into a glow of each other.
In the red light on his placid face,
delighted we shared
(as much as he dared)
I in the red blush of my satisfied shell
rueful for what you and I once enjoyed,
nearly always good in bed,
but for your losing-day to losing-day attitude,
that ruled then ruined us,
incompatible over breakfast
for letting the flame go out.
I can hardly forgive you.
You blew it. You blew it out.
I can hardly say it:
I loved you so much I hate you.