Man & Man

at age eighteen i felt the touch of you (a man):
your whiteness stiff on my fingers - also stiff -
when i was pushing-pulling in the chill
of my childhood bedroom that March afternoon

strangely in our pleasures i was grieving
the loss of something i had, a softness i once felt
in that bed before i knew what pleasures were -
before i knew its ins and outs and hows and whys

strangely more i thought of my mother:
how if she burst into the room to find
our first pleasures, her only pleasure would be
to see that you were not a man (which you are)

i remember asking you to come with me
under the covers, but you needed our pleasures
in the open air - where vengeful God
could see our sin - i wanted to hide from His eyes

my rosary was hanging from my wall - the little Christ
looking at me, looking at us, i felt the fury of Heaven
stinging, but not as great as the fury of
our flesh stamped with our pleasure

Christ was a man who died for man
that day, i died with you, man for man

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