Habitrail



                         there's 

absolutely nothing I can do to stop this fantasizing 

after I'm in bed about you kissing me and licking me and 

stroking me and stoking me and tickling and suckling and 

all those other k-sound verbs that really aren't respectable which 

isn't even mentioning the nouns I know with k-sounds for the 

part of your anatomy that truly is delectable or 

so I keep imagining although I wouldn't know because you 

never let me near enough to see you let alone to taste you 

even though you promised me one day we'd get together and do 

things to one another that are barely even legal well I 

thought you promised maybe not but all the same it seems to me that 

when somebody asks you to come over to his house at night and 

plays his damn guitar for you and drinks a quart of wine with you and 

turns you on by telling sixty-eight erotic anecdotes and 

finally unfolds himself to sprawl upon the kitchen floor a 

sexy interruption of the geometric pattern of the black and white linoleum well 

I don't know but I would say that constitutes an invitation 

jeez I only wish that I could stop all this remembering the

thought of you I have to say is getting kind of irritating 

scurrying and squeaking like a gerbil in a Habitrail a-

round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and 

on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and 

on and on and on you know it's very inconvenient that the 

brain is so long-winded that it never has to stop to breathe the 

brain's a videographer who never caps the camera lens which 

means that when I shut my eyes to try to get some sleep at least my 

lids begin the screening of the circuitry of scrutiny the 

feature presentation is you looking at me looking at you

looking at me looking at you looking at me looking at so 

Nietzsche has an aphorism saying in the end one only 

loves one's own desire not the object of desire which I 

must say might be true because the one thing on my mind these days has 

not been strictly speaking you but me and my obsession with you 

which is good for poetry but definitely smacks a bit of 

solipsism solipsism solipsism solipsism 

actually you know it's rather comforting to me this whole i-

dea that you don't exist except inside my brain because I 

know although I can't control the you who seems to be outside me 

there's a presence in my head that I have christened after you it 

answers when I call your name it condescends to look like you it 

graciously arrays itself in willful eyes and nervous hands it 

says the things you said to me it does the things you did to me and 

better still it kindly does the things you've never done to me and 

never will and never will and never will        oh 

there are many uses one can find for an homunculus a 

charming little pet that one can cherish and apostrophize and 

though I guess you might object to living only in my mind there's 

absolutely nothing you can do 

"Habitrail" debuted August 31, 2001.

Performed at Best of No Shame on November 15 & 16, 2001.

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