You might
kick into the macho and feel nothing
or into the fear labyrinth
that makes a man leave softly past the woman.
You might.

Or
worry about babies,
your sons and daughters
who are already duplicated out here.
You even know
you already dislike them.

So you watch her practicing on you
and it’s a kind of pleasure.

My brother, my crime,
I’ll put whiskey next to you and a book of poems,
forms of fertile water
mocking the times’ parched sperm
because we’ve left so much
in warm dangerous places women lend us.

Those we loved we sacked    and filled with our customs
till the invader betrayed himself.
Then we seeped patience.
then the offense never existed dissolved
and everything was as it was before,
desperate and absurd and contradictory.

I swear,
waiting till the woman
arrives with your personal victory
is worth it, whether it means pretending months of celibacy
or playing a distant gayness
that keeps mystery in a mostly bleak manhood.