Some men, cursed with a love for scarcity…

If I have felt you before, and remember this taste 
That leads me on, and gets me up, overflowing 
Coffee, two rivers touching my toes, Smoking too many cigarettes, 

Abundance, peaking out even from
The reflection of skin in the Essex turnstile, 
The Jersey skyline, tennis balls, dirty rivers
Its you, I love! 

How can some men curse themselves with
Such a love for scarcity that degrades? For though 
A depleted destitute life could bore the imagination, 
Never could love. Nor a 4 o’clock coffee thinking of you. 

Not toil, but a sexy power, so much that
Steers between stones, and docks us, 
at the grave of love, forever sprayed with 
gusts of water, forever a choice to recur. 
 
Men so cursed, have they not flown into the sea?
Or stood under the earth, tuning out Death’s wrath
While gazing back at the baffling prize of life, 
Wifed, impossible to refuse. 

***

For if I sailed the taunting sea and his wanton waves, 
for a want I may never see, I would relent until I docked. 

I would refuse the death teased to me when the ship seems 
not to sail anymore and the horizon decides to vanish. 

The ship must sail until I dock. 
and there, docked, instead of Death 
I will take myself apart. 

For I’m no use as a sailor if there are no sails to be stirred. 
And I’ll offer myself up to whomever grabs me first, 
so they may rebuild my skin soft enough to cradle. 
A boat not yet dismantled, waiting faithful, though

I’ll walk and lay for aye with my builder, 
Sustained by a want that once stirred my sails, 
I’ll live to never look back at the sea. 
(For how could I look at anything but you?)