Passion Around Two Coffee Pots

After you have heated the coffee pots

And after you have emptied and cleaned them,

We will talk yet again

Around our silly, incipient love.

I shall want to discuss it naked

With you in a shower,

But I cannot.

I shall only gaze

And converse nervously

About the this morning’s

God-damned quarter moon.

“Did you see the moon this morning?” I shall ask.

I have applied oatmeal vanilla lotion,

And this is my aphrodisiac.

It is, I am sure,

More alluring than my feeble speech,

So I can now say that, at least,

I am prepared to meet you.

I will not speak with you this evening

Of Joyce or Hemingway or Kant,

For I have never read their useless, futile words.

When finally inspired and perhaps even calm,

I shall hint

At the fudge sickles and chocolates and toasted bagels

Which I shall bring to you.

Mine, like a song of innocence,

Is a shy love.

It does not transform or transcend or float away like a rose.

It does, however, someday kiss, I am sure.

I think it is much like vanilla lotion.