after John Ashbery

 

See, our lips bend:

we are always moving warmthward (if I may)

through and beyond what we forgot we would say:

 

I’m so about being buried together.

Your nightmares are of us being unkind to each other.

Yesterday, on our first day off in months, you cried ‘cause

 

a scientist at a global convention declared that

we only have a few decades left of living like this.

I’m so fucking glad we got sober when we did.

 

Kiss me before I mention landfills, my adolescent love affair

with the god-glare on the Mayan calendar,

my adult one with clapping on the 1 and the 3.

 

Kiss me because more people have been to Berlin than I have,

in the shower when the water temp makes our bodies hum—

let me see you without distance between us, let me

 

see you seeing me as amazing. O the steam!

If it all ends soon, it’ll be slow and sorrowful

but I know now that I will dance towards someone

 

while my mind can still reach for magic.