The dance of becoming acquainted
at first, is just wild rock and roll
or maybe R&B,
you do your thing, I do mine,
perhaps we do them in the same space
with some influence that shapes
what the other is doing, but mostly
I move how I do, and that’s that;
I’m always moving to the slower beat
the one behind the main beat
feeling it in my hips and wanting to sway;
like one partner said, as if this was
an insult, I dance like a girl. yes, proudly so.

A little later in becoming acquainted, it’s more like Bachata
in open position; your hands above, mine inverted, yours resting in mine,
two arm lengths apart, but moving at least
in the same direction to the same rhythm.
Then, in dancing as in everything, I’m the lead
and I bring you into closed position
my right arm around your left side under your arm
hand on your shoulderblade, your elbow resting on mine
other hands giving each other enough pressure
to keep the form, sense the moves.

When I know you more fully, it’s Kizomba
chest and belly to chest and belly
my lead in my intent and pressure,
slow and sensual. There’s the old joke,
why do Baptists not have sex standing up?
Because someone might think they are dancing.
I think about that, and the Irish saying,
dancing is a vertical expression of
a horizontal impulse, when I see anyone I desire
across from me, their body moving in ways
that make my heat rise, energy moving up my spine;
or when I see her dancing with another man
her hips moving in ways I know from my bed
and sometimes, just sometimes
I get it exactly right, exactly locked into my partner’s intent
and we are like one body, the beast with two backs
but on the dance floor and not the bed.

One night at a dance workshop, where there were
separate rooms for each style, in the Kizomba room
the songs flowed one into the other without pause
and I watched a couple who had just met,
an older man and a gorgeous young woman
getting acquainted through their moves, his lead sure
without being oppressive, her follow only a moment behind
and my heart longed for that with each of my loves,
that connection, that intensity, so that my eyes were teary;
and then my dance and bed partner, seeing what I was watching,
leaned over and said, seeing them makes me wet, I want that with you;
and I realized that it’s not the dance of becoming acquainted
that I need to learn, but the knowing each other in every sense of knowing
that I need to let flow into my lead, so that whether or not we are lovers,
my follows surrender, as all good follows eventually must.

I look at you and hold out my hand and you stand and take it;
I lead you onto the dance floor, for now, perhaps,
in open position, or we can still dance rock and roll if we desire,
but inevitably, as we dance ever closer, learning the other’s stories,
opening our vulnerabilities, we will be dancing
belly to belly and chest to chest
and most lovely of all, for me, mind to mind and heart to heart.

When I was married, if a woman flirted with me,
I could count on a nuclear barrage when I got home;
even if I didn’t flirt back, all hell broke loose
she threw things or threw things at me
and there was no protection, like when I was in elementary school
and we had ‘duck and cover’ exercises getting under our desks,
as if that was going to make any difference
if an atomic bomb went off at the refinery a handful of miles away.

Nukes are no longer part of my daily life
that arms race I just walked away from
so now I can just figuratively sit back
and enjoy flirting, the energy, the fun, the playfulness,
although with you, well, the heat was almost
as fierce as a bomb blast, when you touched
my leg with your foot, or took my hand
and placed it on your ass, even though I had set
the container to only be making out,
that was a difficult, I should say hard, moment
to withdraw from.

Flirting is location and person specific.
Flirting is the wind going through the trees in my back yard,
sitting crosslegged on my couch, wanting to look
at your short skirt when it rides up, but instead
looking at your face, thinking about how your lips
will feel against mine. Flirting is the connection
when I put my arm across the back of the couch
and touch your shoulder. We talk about our histories, music, friends.
Your eyes are shining, radiant.

The energy of flirting is the energy
of fucking, 100 times slower; approach, withdraw; enter your space
move away, a little, from your space, each time a little farther in,
savoring the connection as much as I savored the salad you made me for supper.

More, please.

I liked the way your hands felt
between mine, soft and powerful
I could feel the energy,
touching the inside of your wrists
your gaze changing, some hints of passion.
I like hints. I like the slow movement
with someone I am meeting;
the teasing out of story, of connection;
the possibilities, or not, that open.
Your eyes are soft and stern simultaneously.
When I approach a definition of self,
a naming of your path,
that fits you, your whole body relaxes.
My desire is to open that path
since where it leads can’t be known
from this side of the gate.

Words come flowing out
things I might have said
years before but bit back

I’m sitting on the couch
we bought for our new house
my tongue shredded by pain
lips bloodied the way my arm was
when you dug your nails in
heart cut partly through
in little ribbons
like those Mexican paper flags
that hang from the strings
in the restaurant we go to
every Sunday after church

My words hang in the air
between us, you unable to hear
both of us crying

You say, you promised to stay
when I was old, I say
I don’t feel safe with you
and I leave, and leave again
multiple times as I retrieve
the rest of my stuff that
you hadn’t yet destroyed.

Fast forward three years
I’m sitting on another couch,
my beloved’s, it’s later night,
I have come to your space
to tell you difficult things,
things I need from you
I am crying suddenly
flashing on the memory
of the other time
and you look at me
and I see that this time
I am heard, you fully hear me
and in that single moment
you heal my heart
from all those years
she told me
that I was nothing.

In a text, you were flippant
about one of my rules.
I text: this isn’t a game
to me. Thirty minutes go by.
Then your reply: nor to me.
My heart swells, this is the first
moment of complete certainty
since your first surrender;
I am dizzy with what opens in front of me
and I reply: then, when you are with him
You WILL wear the bracelet
as your day-collar?
Your reply: Yes, David.
I never knew exactly the power
your obedience would open in me
and tears of gratitude come
that you are mine.

One killed, three wounded,
the headline said. Obscenely,
momentarily grateful it wasn’t more.
Hating that my brain did that.

What does it take to be a MASS shooting
now? more than 4, more than 14 dead?
Is there a critical mass of dead needed?
Maybe the critical mass of a man-made almost sun
over a Japanese town decades ago.
I think about other kinds of mass shootings.
Oscar Romero, shot during Mass.
One dead, but the course of everything changed
a church turning inward on itself
for fear of an expansive future.
Jews, including, I only know by omission
of their names from future records,
probable distant cousins of mine,
because I was born and raised Jewish,
lined up in front of a pit in Lithuania
and shot, in complete Nazi efficiency
so that their bodies fell into the pit
without piling up too close to the edge
(This scene is not imaginary because a Christian
villager described it completely nonchalantly
to an American soldier in 1945;
we wouldn’t want to have to dig the pit
any bigger then, you know).

The same old same old. Hatred of people
not like us, Jews and gypsies and queers
and none of that has changed since 1945
or 1845 or her and now or whenever;
the current president has only brought out
into the light what has always been there,
what Jews and people of color and queer folx
have always known,
that there are white people who refuse
to acknowledge our humanity, and what
all of us still know and feel in our bodies:
fear of the darkened street after a drink out
when I have gone out sparkly and obvious;
fear of the small town policeman
pulling me over for no real reason;
fear of the people who hold power over my work
whose Facebook page turned out to be full
of white supremacist, anti-gay, anti-Muslim crap;
and nothing bad has ever happened to me personally
except the looks and jeers and namecalling
but you can’t compare trauma and say whose is worse,
fear and contraction have landed in my body
and lie there, festering, waiting to pop up as harsh words
to someone I love dearly, completely without cause;
I want nothing more than to excise them all
all the old words hurled at me, all the looks
from disapproving church ladies about my sparkle
I want to take a deep, long, curved knife
maybe that Biblical pruning-hook
that spears are supposed to get beaten into someday
and carefully carve that pain out of me,
out of my arms and chest and thighs
like the former lover whose pain was so great
she did that over and over, leaving scars on herself,
the only way she could feel alive

I know no way to end this, to stop the cycle
except for all of us, a little bit each day
being kinder to each other,
listening behind the other’s words for their reality

and so I beg you, for the sake of those people
lined up in front of that pit, about to die,
for the sake of the soldiers whose hatred allowed
them to dehumanize people whose religion was different,
for the sake of everyone who has been shot
or beaten or lynched or just given bad looks
for being different, and for all those
doing the shooting and beating and lynching,
see, that’s the really hard part of this,
for all their sakes, tomorrow, and the next day,
and the next, until it becomes in our inner bones
and ligaments and blood an ineradicable habit,
every day for as long as you still are breathing:
just add one more kindness to your repertoire;
restrain the irritation;
smile at the harried mother in the store;
because, I believe, admittedly without any proof at all
except the truth my heart speaks to me
when I lie awake in the middle night
that each smile, each restraint, each kindness
is one less bullet.

I hear my lover’s voice on the phone
it’s been a long time since it was in person
and I hear her exhaustion
the boss from hell is not a joke;
my heart breaks a little
I want to make it better
but I can’t, except, when,
next we are together, I hold her
in my arms, skin to skin,
and kissing her lips, and neck
and breasts and more
show her again that love
is not only a word

Fact: My father died on Valentine’s Day 2001.
Fact: I have been doing a shitload of personal work.
Fact: I barely have it together some days.

Knowing I am going to die
is the last gift of his life
that my father gave me.
If we all really knew that,
if we felt it in our skin,
then we would not take lightly
things that matter,
we would not allow injustice so blithely,
we would not give in at work to pressure to conform ,
we would not fail to make that hard phone call
to a friend who has lost someone dear.
I am going to die
and everyone I love is going to die,
some of them before me, leaving me
heartbroken and grieving,
and it seems completely paradoxical,
but because of this,
I am full of joy now every day,
every day more than the last,
joy in my beloved’s skin against my skin,
joy in the beauty of simple things
sunsets and wasps and drizzle and weeds in the garden
and because of this I can affirm,
which might seem a stretch away from death,
that my beloved has the most magnificent ass.
She has an ass I had only dreamed about before
but never actually seen on a woman.
The rest of her is hot as hell too
but it’s the ass that gets me
and I’ve always been a boob man.

I hear locker room talk about a woman
being a great piece of ass.
I don’t know what’s wrong with those guys.
I don’t want just a piece of her ass.
I want all of it.
The left side, perfectly shaped; the crack,
well, we all know where that leads,
don’t tell me you don’t like that
and then the right side,
just as perfect as the left but very slightly rounder.
No, don’t give me just a piece of ass.
Give me the whole thing,
and yeah, I’m not stupid,
I know that’s a turn of phrase
about getting laid, it just seems
like a particularly unhelpful one.
I say, the whole ass
and nothing but the ass.
She has an ass to die for;

see, that was all about death after all.

One of the women’s empowerment groups
she has worked in for some years
instead of talking about women as beautiful
talk about them as radiant.
I love that. I can barely think of any women
I have ever known who weren’t radiant.
When I was a pastor I did hospital calls
and one time I went to see a woman dying
of liver cancer, and she was there in the hospital bed
holding the hand of her daughter
her skin completely bronze from liver failure,
mostly medicated, and when I read to her
the psalm that starts, The Lord is my Shepherd
her face became radiant. My 84 year old
former piano teacher, when we have lunch now,
is amazingly radiant, still thinking and making music
and continuing her career
as a scholar and musician. The lover I mentioned
the one with the magnificent ass, turns 65 this year
and she is one of the sexiest women I have ever met;
age has nothing to do with radiance,
and I hear over and over from women
when they look in the mirror that they don’t like
this or that about the way they look
and I want to tell you, all the women hearing this
or reading this in this moment. every one of you is blazing
with radiance, in your eyes and bodies and minds
and pussies and hips and bellies
and thighs and arms and hands
and don’t let anyone ever tell you differently
especially men who aren’t vulnerable enough
to know that their power begins in knowing their own death.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t sit around
thinking about funerals all the time.
I’m more likely to be thinking about things she has said to me:
that when I arrive to see her, her skin tingles;
that with me she knows she will climax;
that her desire for me is constant.
I’m more likely to be in the moment,
feeling the warmth of her skin under my finger
as I trace along her spine down to the hollow;
I reach around her and circle her nipple,
she presses back against me, her ass,
the fucking magnificent one, rubbing my cock
she reaches her arm back and circles the back of my neck
with her hand, and with the other
pulls my hand to her pussy, pressing my finger
in between the lips, already wet, and I bring my finger
to my mouth to taste her, anticipating how easily
I will enter her, how her body will move in longing,
how she will sound as I lick her.

Sex and death, death and sex, two sides of the same thing;
I’ll take both, thank you.