Popular Classics

Popular Classics

Popular Classics

there’s an end to sex
it’s like the alphabet but simpler
                          and for you, all there is
and for you too
this gets clearer day by day
and the background music gets louder,
majestic & tender or at least
suggesting you feel that way,
as if you were strapped to a plank
that’s floating out to sea—
not riding the surf but less directly mimetic,
a function of tides and currents,
not the waves—
you go where a history of flotsam sends you,
an extended metaphor covered in barnacles
                                     and on your way to comic fame
where falling in love
becomes a theory of presence,
as if each bit of sea wrack
whitening above the high-tide line
knew what the flesh is heir to
and why
like a vague rehearsal, you were there.