Gender Studies

So to defuse the dynamite of desiring someone
(shock: your encounter with another’s oneness)
(aftershock: encounter with your own otherness)
resist any impulse to tire of detonating desire.

Around your androgynous countenance glances
descend like debris. Everyone struggles through
figuring out their bodies. Standing there, you
resemble an “I”—you’re capital—learning that

by accepting contradiction, all you’ve learned is
neither true nor false, futile, your daily battle of
self-assurance against self-doubt, when you think
you need to know but you don’t know and then

you still don’t know, you think you’ll never know
and then you know you don’t need to know.

• • •

The Individuals

Two who couldn’t improve themselves
            in love, which is no more
than approximation of motherly love;
            anxiety of loving too much
or not enough, anxiety of not being
            loved. Years elapsed.
Every nanosecond was a precipice
            into intense intimacy
they forged forward—desiring climax
            despising decline—until
approaching the detour the turnaround
            where their destinations diverge
their ending begins. They’re ready
            to dissolve to subsume
each other as present fuses with future.
            And new, now newer and newer.

• • •

On the Mountain

Then we reached the peak
            and looked back. The path
wasn’t simple, was a test
            of gravity against elevation
like desire developing, evolving
            despite our need to be free
from fixation, attachments
            without which I wouldn’t
recognize myself while you would
            disappear. What’s beyond
these plots lined side by side
            greenness in all directions
trek devoid of endpoint, going
            nowhere, one unknown
after another? When will we
            die? Not now. And so
out of almost eight billion people
            on this planet, it’s you
I’ll follow every day, every day
            for as long as you’ll allow.