Simple Gifts

For Gavin

Of all the nooses I have chosen—ties,
nylon laundry line, black leather belts,
fairy hands fumbling at my throat—I
found none completely equal to the task
of enhancing my orgasms—and what’s worse,

un-poetic in the extreme. Always,
I wound up bug-eyed, twitching, coughing my-
self silly, dildo dislodged, coins of cum
scattered all across my hardwood floors,
dissolving the polyurethane finish.

I have no desire to wake up in Heaven
hanging from a big brass doorknob like
a retired Tory politician—even
a member of Mrs. Thatcher’s cabinet.
Mom would never forgive me. So, I am

glad to have you here, thinking ahead.
Let us die a nice American death,
clean and simple as a Shaker hymn:
on hands and knees, your arm around my neck,
our eyes upturned in prayer, cock in ass.