I’ll say without the hedging grace of politesses:
I’ve wanted man — firm, angled, bristled jaw
Dragged slow across my throat, the prick that presses
Its throb against my lips, the ramrod’s raw
And driving insistence, the shaft gripped fast,
The heat of it, the groan in it, the way
A man’s desire stabs into you — massed
And muscled, rippling, that percussive sway
And buck and thrust, the form’s blunt turgescence
Pressed to the palate and the throat until you choke
And swallow — all of it, the whole extent
Of what a man’s body says when it has spoke
It’s wanting into yours. I will not dim
This telling, I’ve wanted that magnitude
That pulses thick against your tongue, the hum
A body makes when it is close, bedewed,
To breaking. And I have wanted woman —
Not as consolation, not as a guise
From the harder hunger, but for her own sovereign
Idiom: the breast that heaves and sighs
Rises warm beneath the hand, the nipple
Swelled like leavened bread in fire,
The soft and layered folds, the stipple
Of hair upon the tongue, the briny mire
The mound makes when it is wet and wide,
The taste of her, the delicate and dripping
Warmth of it, the petals spread and plied,
Grasping in a separate kind of gripping
Darkness — soft, sucking, and toe-curling—
Yielding where the other drove and pinned.
Not lesser in its claim, a distinct unfurling
Of the same deep wanting, differently skinned.
Two hungers, neither specter
Of the other, neither half of something theorized
As whole — a doubled wanting, I’ll not hector
The telling into one, or leave it bowdlerized
For comfortable reception. Both run clear
Through me, have had their evidence, their full
Confession, and their claim, to both adhere
In ever twain. The pull
Is real, and present tense, and freed
Of apology. Those who calculate my kind
Will say twilusting compels a double deed,
That appetite in double is by nature signed
To double practice — that a man who carries
This twofold heat cannot in conscience bind it
To a single object, that fidelity miscarries
Where half the wanting has no place to spend it,
That the vow is half a vow. I bore
This imputation, wore it knowing what it was:
A mirror angled flattering, the whore
Of principle dressed up to earn applause,
The appetite’s own vent in moral clothing,
The wanting uncongealed and costumed as a right,
I know it from inside the wearing, loathing
Nothing in it more than how the light
It casts is cold. There is no notarizing
In the doubled nature of my want —
No charter issues from the blood’s uprising,
No certified release falls out of what I haunt
And hunger after. Appetite, when split
In two directions, is still appetite,
Not deed, not license, not signed and countersigned a writ.
The twilust is not sanctioned by its plight.
I chose a woman, not because the other
Hunger shuttered, ceased to pulse and see —
Those fires still gutter; I remain a brother
To that wanting. It has not left me,
But flares and quickly fades, a candle’s measure
Of heat beside the furnace she has lit —
Acknowledged, real, but not the greater pleasure:
In her the whole account is infinite
And answering. We have been known, each one
To the other, past the bounds of self —
What’s hers and mine in long communion grown
Indistinct: each body is the shelf
The other feeds from, ample and complete,
No periphery observed, no part of her
My mouth has not laid bare — the briny sweet
Of her, the fold on fold, the stir
And press of flesh on flesh and soul in soul,
Mouth to mouth and tongue to tongue and every
Part of each conjoined — we have no shoal
Too deep for sounding, nothing held in airy
Reserve between us: she receives entire
What I am, and I her, and in the loss
Of self in the receiving and the fire
Of being thus received, we bear a cross
That is also consummation — not
The dying only, but the death that spills
Back into life again, the ravenous knot
Of wanting tightened past what satisfies or fills
To something past the filling, where to be
So wholly merged is not the end of hunger
But its apotheosis — endlessly
Beginning in each other, going under
And arising, spent and wholly new at once.
This is the form the twilust takes when housed
In one true place — not penance, not a dunce’s
Corner of desire, not vow-espoused
Half-living — but the whole and doubled heat
Given its home at last, and burning there
No less for being faithful. In her, meet
And absolute, the twilust finds its prayer
Entirely answered: every want arrived
In one who answers and exceeds the wanting.
Two fires, one hearth, not penitent, contrived
Of nothing — real and chosen, and not taunting
Myself with what I haven’t taken. Whole
And hers and every morning the first morning —
The body known so well it is the soul
Made visible, and still a new adorning
Of astonishment. I was born this man
And stay this man: the twilust and the vow,
Not one of them diminished — the full span
Of what I am, committed, here, and now.