Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained[.]
          —Blake¹

                    i.

Not sure what side of the screen
we’re on, if the glass deceives us
or them, if they can see what
we do between this illusory and ephemeral
ecstasy’s exasperating sheets of reinforced plastic, manufactured
fantasies against which our ill-tempered breath streams
ballistic, presses with kisses like little fists,
Kevlar cuties guarding only our hearts and
nothing else lest Cupid take another shot

                    ii.

and it’s such cupidity which got us
into this mess, transgression a blessing weakening
the knees of automaton libertines all too
eager to receive what eats its host,
this disease, to perform its disparate and
divisive symptoms cohesively as an orchestra does
a symphony, wicked creatures making of our
varied differences’ dissonance a crude unity, combining
the various cries of our debaucheries if

                    iii.

not into harmony, then a polyphony comprised
of the sundry partings and uprootings our
splintered bodies have endured so openly, decomposing
in the arms of a ferryman conducting
us to an audience with the king
of something better since for so long
the emptiness of this bedroom’s kingdom has
bred feelings of nothingness, a suddening of
silence rushes in to overtake the dissipating

                    iv.

mist of lust’s fleeting climax, fog fills
conquest’s foothills with its thickening chill, and
all of this to depict a blankening
of these faces’ canvases the stains of
our moonlit uncleanliness disdains, to hide behind
images and myths of our own making
we accomplish awakening those beasts for whom
our undoing is their only reason for
being, to avoid the peristence of self-perpetuating

                    v.

punishment, to bridge the pitfall of its
all-encompassing, soul-engulfing precipice, we need to see
ourselves not as enemies or reflections, but
friends to trust and fall back on,
companions whose bond is that fondness for
things just as they are which others
stronger than us call self-acceptance, for once,
finally, to get this and not fuck
up our chances at love, to get

                    vi.

something started to look up, Wilde-style, from
our wild-side gutters and realize stars are
fire above heaven, never accosting the
cosmos for doing what it does best:
working as it should, toward fulfilling the
purpose for which it was constructed, to
exist and love and nothing else, following
without struggling against temptation to rebellion its
courses its creator’s hands fashioned, to honour

                    vii.

this indescribable attachment detractors slander as “intrinsically
disordered,”² such as our hands do the
curves and angles of men, chiseled clay
displaced by the weightless æther of infinite
space only a little lower than the
angels, begging pardon and grace, ardent proponents
of the chase only so unchaste in
those sweating moments of swollen throats choking
on the heart’s fear every song its

                    viii.

want wrote might go unheard, broken bards
afraid of shattering to shards unspoken desires
they hold onto so hard they break
the strings of their lyres, able to
bend only so far until they become
what we are, suspended statues awaiting animation,
to be ensouled with the warmth of
another’s breath, of which every kiss is
an offering to the gods, since passion

                    ix.

invites crashing from its necessary collision of
heavenly bodies, to overcome inertia we need
to fall, to get the ball rolling
we need to experience emotion and learn
to crawl all over again, to be
humbled by how small we are in
comparison with the giants of old who
survived exile from this garden for crimes
worse than our own and somehow found

          happiness.

__________
¹William Blake, “The Voice of the Devil”, Plates 5–6[, Line 1], of “The text of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: with an Introduction and Commentary by Sir Geoffrey Keynes, published at Oxford by Oxford University Press in association with The Trianon Press, Paris in 1992; page xvi.
²“[Section] II. The Vocation to Chastity: Chastity and homosexuality”, [Paragraph] 2357, in “Part Three: Life in Christ: Section Two: The Ten Commandments: Chapter Two: ‘You Shall Love Your Neighbor as Yourself’: Article 6: The Sixth Commandment” of Catechism of the Catholic Church: With Modifications from the Editio Typica: Second Edition, published at New York by Doubleday in 1997; page 625.