In your bed we make a myth of whatever
is at hand on the sill and tables, when we kiss
we join together two of Plato’s Caves
into a duplex where the light and shadows
are both extinguished and we embrace the real
Going further we rapture through a series
of small deaths and resurrections,
minute floods that last for forty minutes
or more and the creation myths of sky
and earth we interrupt time and time again
After libations, we imagine the whole world
looking up at us and yet unable to see
past the Olympus of our high-rise window frame,
yet through it we can spy the city
glittering like the pillars of creation
In the morning, you remain aloft beneath
the sheets and I descend into the underworld,
unable to sing or pluck a lyre to soothe
the Mount Rushmore of despairing, tired faces
sitting in rows under the passing lights
At best I am a demigod when I ride
the express like a sparking chariot down
Manhattan and along the earth’s lid, at worst,
I mill about with a multitude on station
platforms, the best we can be, merely players
Against a desk, pinned by fears of starvation
and rent, I seethe and soothe myself
with thoughts of being a repressed superhero,
capable of leaping over any line break, but
befuddled by the kryptonite of dastardly capital
The night brings a chance to be reborn,
I rise up from the ashes and crumbs
of the keyboard and fly through your window,
a phoenix seeking his Astarte, protected
by the halo of latex, love, and allusions to Ilium
