Night traveling

... long before HIV, there was a sense both men and
women had of being rushed by sex into oblivion....
                                                   —Linsey Abrams

Because we are unsatisfied, and because we can,
we look into someone's eyes
that might love us and we ask, Come—
Take me from this

We want to cease. No, we want the body
to cease. And, because it also wants this,
we look for some other
shape we might become then,
upon return.

Take me, you said.

The next morning, early, I remembered
the dream: the long flight keeling
away on the back of a black bird,
how sights cleared just at perception;
that someone laughed, whoever I was, scared at
the chill beneath desire, under all sky.

 

Poems by Forrest Hamer: