“Mathematicians still don’t understandthe ball our hands made, or howyour electrocuted grandparents made it possiblefor you to light my cigarettes with your eyes.It isn’t as simple as me climbing into the windowto leave six ounces of orange juiceand a doughnut by the bed, or me becomingthe sand you dug your toes in,on the beach, when you wishedto hide them from the sun and the fixed eyesof strangers, and your breath broke in wavesover my earlobe, splashing through my head, spilling outover the opposite lobe, and my first poemsunder your door in the unshaven light of dawn:Your eyes remind me of a brick wallabout to be hammered by a drunkdriver. I’m that driver. All nightI’ve swallowed you in the bar.Once I kissed the scar, stretching its sealedeyelid along your inner arm, driedraining strands of hair, full of pheromones, discoveredall your idiosyncratic passageways, so I’d knowwhere to run when the cops came.Your body is the country I’ll never return to.The man in charge of what crosses my mindwill lose fingernails, for not turning youaway at the border. But at this momentwhen sweat tingles from me, andblame is as meaningless as shooting up a cow with milk,I realise my kisses filled the halls of your bodywith smoke, and the lies camelike a season. Most drunks don’t die in accidentsthey orchestrate, and I swalloweda hand grenade that never stops exploding.”

“We live in a modern society. Husbands and wives don'tgrow on trees, like in the old days. So wheredoes one find love? When you're sixteen it's easy, like being unleashed with a credit cardin a department store of kisses. There's the first kiss.The sloppy kiss. The peck.The sympathy kiss. The backseat smooch. The weshouldn't be doing this kiss. The but your lipstaste so good kiss. The bury me in an avalanche of tingles kiss.The I wish you'd quit smoking kiss.The I accept your apology, but you make me really madsometimes kiss. The I knowyour tongue like the back of my hand kiss. As you getolder, kisses become scarce. You'll be drivinghome and see a damaged kiss on the side of the road, with its purple thumb out. If youwere younger, you'd pull over, slide open the mouth'sred door just to see how it fits. Oh wheredoes one find love? If you rub two glances, you get a smile.Rub two smiles, you get a warm feeling.Rub two warm feelings and presto-you have a kiss. Now what? Don't invite the kiss overand answer the door in your underwear. It'll get suspiciousand stare at your toes. Don't water the kiss with whiskey. It'll turn bright pink and explode into a thousand luscious splinters, but in the morning it'll be ashamed and sneak out ofyour body without saying good-bye, and you'll remember that kiss forever by all the little cuts it lefton the inside of your mouth. You mustnurture the kiss. Turn out the lights. Notice how itilluminates the room. Hold it to your chestand wonder if the sand inside hourglasses comes from aspecial beach. Place it on the tongue's pillow, then look up the first recorded kiss in an encyclopedia: beneatha Babylonian olive tree in 1200 B.C.But one kiss levitates above all the others. Theintersection of function and desire. The I do kiss.The I'll love you through a brick wall kiss. Even when I'm dead, I'll swim through the Earth, like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next to your bones.”

“Hey you, dragging the halo-how about a holiday in the islands of grief? Tongue is the word I wish to have with you.Your eyes are so blue they leak.Your legs are longer than a prisoner'slast night on death row.I'm filthier than the coal miner's bathtuband nastier than the breath of Charles Bukowski.You're a dirty little windshield.I'm standing behind you on the subway, hard as calculus. My breathbe sticking to your neck like graffiti.I'm sitting opposite you in the bar, waiting for you to uncross your boundaries.I want to rip off your logicand make passionate sense to you.I want to ride in the swing of your hips.My fingers will dig in you like quotation marks, blazing your limbs into parts of speech.But with me for a lover, you won't needcatastrophes. What attracted me in the first placewill ultimately make me resent you.I'll start telling you lies, and my lies will sparkle, become the bad stars you chart your life by.I'll stare at other women so blatantlyyou'll hear my eyes peeling, because sex with you is like Great Britain: cold, groggy, and a little uptight.Your bed is a big, soft calculatorwhere my problems multiply.Your brain is a garageI park my bullshit in, for free.You're not really my new girlfriend, just another flop sequel of the first one, who was based on the true story of my mother.You're so ugly I forgot how to spell.I'll cheat on you like a ninth grade math test, break your heart just for the sound it makes.You're the 'this' we need to put an end to.The more you apologize, the less I forgive you.So how about it?”

“When you were sleeping on the sofaI put my ear to your ear and listenedto the echo of your dreams.That is the ocean I want to dive in, merge with the bright fish, plankton and pirate ships.I walk up to people on the street that kind of look like youand ask them the questions I would ask you.Can we sit on a rooftop and watch stars dissolve into smokerising from a chimney? Can I swing like Tarzan in the jungle of your breathing? I don’t wish I was in your arms, I just wish I was peddling a bicycle toward your arms.”

“But one kiss levitates above all the others. Theintersection of function and desire. The I do kiss.The I’ll love you through a brick wall kiss.Even when I’m dead, I’ll swim through the Earth,like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next to your bones.”

“I swallowed a hand grenade that never stops exploding.”

“I surrendered my identity in your eyes.Now I'm just like everybody else, and it's so funny, the way monogamy is funny, the waysomeone falling down in the street is funny.I entered a revolving door and emergedas a human being. When you think of meis my face electronically blurred? I remember your collarbone, forming the tiniestsatellite dish in the universe, your smileas the place where parallel lines inevitably crossed.Now dinosaurs freeze to death on your shoulder.I remember your eyes: fifty attack dogs on a single leash, how I once held the soft audience of your hand.I've been ignored by prettier women than you, but none who carried the heavy pitchers of silenceso far, without spilling a drop.”