With Their Eyes Open

They fucked with their eyes open
Looked and sucked with their eyes open
Couldn't see each other with their eyes open
A gaze nubile and androgenic
flits down and up
Panties off and legs akimbo,
her eyes were opened

Wrought of powerful sins;
on the off-chance things go well
they step quickl-y
don’t see-
but feel seen-
they slip-
topple into a lake of time

Disease dissipates among a stagnation of bodies:
nectar, but no ambrosia:
words without context,
words with subtext
To have and to hold, did it matter, matter it did
-extolling platonic ideals of distraction

Paris in the autumn,
A clandestine crossing, known to few
distance between hands, (blindness) over
eyes closed
Pairs of lips in orbits around craniums,
felt though unseen
Looking at what they cannot clutch:
eyes are drawn shut
Paris in the autumn, shades of ochre,
crumpling colour,
thunderclap eyelids
in the country of forbidden touch,
the anatomy of a kiss,
they saw (with their eyes open)
A love with hands over mouths,

¹Prayed for a storm,
got a breeze; prayed for pleasure
(a queer thing)
got beat on
by crude indifference
Anthropocene people
dancing around with resounding decadence being

²enjoyed by dead men
in that transitory period between authenticity and
transformation
surrounded by haloed windows:
just close your eyes,
I’ll be here in the morning.

¹'authenticity and transformation' from Bob Paris' blog
(dated: 01/2017, 'Authenticity and Transformation')
²from Townes van Zandt's ‘I'll Be Here in the Morning’.