Chocolate

Cream of the cocoa bean slides
along the tongue like lover's privatest part
and then lights little love fires along
the bayous of the brain

but love it is I lack

so I cover myself hair to toenails
in an armour of cracking chocolate and
walk outside. Everyone wants me now,
even the bears, their shag-carpet breath
heating trickles as they lick me clean.

Rowing Boy

Rowing Boy had slept too long... months perhaps, under what had been a glorious golden blanket of October leaves. He woke with his skin chilled azure by the soft drifts that molded him, his perfect bronzed pecs, his belly on which you could play washboard for the Jim Kweskin Jug Band Reunion (featuring Maria Muldaur on vocals).

Oh, how Rowing Boy longed for the clean pull of his oars, the leap of the trembling shell forward, the wind in his eyes, the grunts of his sluggish opponents. But it was cold, Toronto-February cold, and he was clad only in his dashing shorts, tight as an Erotic Writing Contest Winner's dreams. He looked down, groggily, to inspect the gull that oddly did a fly-past of his ankles -- and it froze too. The two, stilled, caught a little more snow and became art. Meanwhile, all the automatons of the vast city beyond the harbour ran back and forth, forth and back, issuing and consuming preoccupied people, pneumatic doors sometimes catching on ice, but still shuttling, rocking, running.

The sun began to gild the westward rails, and even soften the angular, money-hungry high-rises. Still Rowing Boy had not gotten one good stroke in, one strong pull through the treacly water, dotted with tiny ice floes and the ghosts of seals. February was to be continued.

Naked man

The naked man ran all over the rooftops of the city, his buttocks twinkling like tiny moons, his back somehow turned to all viewers. Perhaps he had heard of the Sadie Hawkins tradition on Feb. 29, and the very thought of a proposal from a woman, any woman, made him strip off his clothes in the February chill and run, run, his small man-self brushing the hydro wires, his teeth chattering at the squirrels and pigeons who were the usual natives of the cluttered rooftops on which he ran, ran.

His back always somehow turned to the audience, his hair brown as an ad for toupees that no-one could tell. Of course, the taggers and sprayers pursued him too, always one slogan or arrow behind his speeding calves, his elongated arms. Last seen, the naked man was running strainght up the gold-leafed windows of a major bank tower, distracting sober-suited execs from their next bonuses.

He needs nothing, being naked, but the wind in his face and the next leap over busy streets that barely notice him.No-one looks up at the naked man, except the nutcases, the poets, those who dream wide awake following their boots along the sidewalk.

Good Vibrations

She wanted him, but didn't want to talk to him. Right now at least. Their bodies fit together like magnetic puzzle parts whenever they were in the same room, but lately words had been tricky. Even a simple question like who loved whom led to blind alleys, sudden reversals, pointless elaborations.She needed a little space from their verbal jousts, to let the grounds settle, see what clarified. But she still wanted him.He'd been calling her cell phone every few minutes, at first leaving playful, then anxious message. Now he was just calling. She felt OK about this -- not stalked. It was reassuring to know how much she was in his mind. Still, she turned her phone ringer off, setting it to vibrate instead. The chirring amused her, sounding like a cricket or purring cat on steroids. But right now she didn't need his mind words, his relationship dialectics. She needed his warm, rough hands, hot breath, little gasps when she pulled or bit something unexpectedly, that smell of earth and sweat and pheromones. She looked at the trapezoid of light slowly sweeping across her wall from the window. The days were getting short. Suddenly she thought of making love with him, of the rewards that slept in dark, moist places, in slippery touches, of pressures that were just enough or deliciously too much.. She wanted him. The phone rang again, and she laid it against her crotch. But the coarse jeans dulled any sensation. So she stood up, stripped them off her long legs, relaxed on the couch, and laid the phone in the vee of her silk thong. Now the buzzing meant something. Now he was talking to her at a deep level. She moaned a little, and said out loud... keep calling me. I don't want to talk to you. Keep calling me.