When I haven't been kissed in a long time, I create civil disturbances, then insult the cops who show up, till one of them grabs me by the collar and hurls me up against the squad car, so I can remember, at least for a moment, what it's like to be touched.

There's two kinds of women--those you write poems about and those you don't.

I've been ignored by prettier women than you, but none who carried the heavy pitchers of silence so far, without spilling a drop.

I want to rip off your logic and make passionate sense to you.

Once I thought I found love, but then I realized I was just out of cigarettes.

But one kiss levitates above all the others. The intersection of function and desire. The I do kiss. The I’ll love you through a brick wall kiss. Even when I’m dead, I’ll swim through the Earth, like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next to your bones.

We didn’t deny the obvious, but we didn’t entirely accept it either. I mean, we said hello to it each morning in the foyer. We patted its little head as it made a mess in the backyard, but we never nurtured it. Many nights the obvious showed up at our bedroom door, in its pajamas, unable to sleep, in need of a hug, and we just stared at it like an Armenian, or even worse— hid beneath the covers and pretended not to hear its tiny sobs.