Maybe more’s not merrier but messier,
since you can be your own

object and taste of desire, both surrender
and control in one wet exchange,

intimacy’s frontbend: the torso strong-
armed against wall or swivel-chair

until the sex dips into the same body’s
mouth. It’s like watering

and being watered at the same time.
Fall seven times,

and you’ll stand up full. Slippery logic:
the snake who ate its tail.

Maybe it’s the true preservationism,
cutting out the middleman—

him or her—making it local and organic,
pleasure’s Trader Joe’s.

But sustainability’s never sexy,
canvas clad in its carbon-cock-blocking.

If you can’t save the penguins please yourself,
Objectivism’s golden rule.

To be volition and validation, lover and lovee,
a recipient handing himself money.

But a party of one’s no fun—
even auto-eroticism’s depressing.

Like a return to the wellspring of childhood,
where we confronted it face-first,

our awful Cub Scout truth:
that we enter the valley unchartered and alone,

and we must leave it this way too.

This poem was one of the winners of the 2011 “Discovery” Poetry Contest.