Ladling him into the bath
Laundering by hand his body
I hold on; gentle wash.

Crouched over him,
Crust of ore around
Some precious metal,

The elements of us
Show their differences:
The hair-hooks that

Tattoo my skin my age,
The lint on his
That clings to water's

Blithely naked covering
Of nakedness;
His doubly haloed lids,

My spartan singles; the size
Of our gaze - the ease
He reads larger for largesse

Of a present comfort
While by trained instinct
I suspect the first modest

Presence that purposed intimacy;
His foot kicks up at my privates.
My penis two shades darker.

If he can ask now
How he belongs to me,
I might stay silent.

Or say, we are two shards
Broken from the same glass.
Or I may not use metaphors.

Or answer him as he
Approached me - with a limb
Over my lowered parts.

The water will be absent of shatters.

                       *

'I will not' she answered, 'not speak.'
After I showed her my first draft.

'And stop the poetry, you are talking about
A life you owe honesty to here.

I'd rather the reading of race
As voluble articulation,

Why he is not Chinese.
Later, if it does not matter, why.'

I thought of the crude precision of race,
Of the philosopher who 'hardly possessed such a thing',

Of the writer who struggles with and through
A language of hidden dissolutions.

I thought of how language ties my hands
Before I write,

How without words my hands are tied.
I thought of a poet friend who

Lies through his poetry,
Because it's our only truth,

Because it is a fistful of gunpowder
That lacerates those who think they possess it,

Those it intends,
Those that surrounds.