What the Body Wants

Not temperance or etiquette, but heavy petting.
Not modesty, but the sweaty chase me games
of childhood. Not renunciation, but chocolate
custard, served in mother’s chipped pink ceramic
custard cups. Not bones, but the marinated all day
meat. Not pious missionary safaris, embarked on
limping and soul-injured in monsoon season.
No cautionary fore-glimpse of its burial place,
the trees waiting, patient and starved for nitrogen
in their secluded grove. The body, undaunted
scholar of its own encyclopedia of greeds,
craves a front row seat for the new satyr play,
lusts after the happy sacraments of black
cashmere sweaters midwinter, big dinners
with plenty of bread to sop up the gravy,
and long nights of athletic sex that leave it giddy
and winded, hallucinating dime-sized fireworks,
gasping that it can’t continue, it’ll expire
on the spot. Then a blessed second wind blows
in out of nowhere, followed by more naked
horseplay, racing thoughts, confessions whispered
into the darkened grate of another body’s hazy face.
Soon absolution ensues, and a little late stargazing,
as the body teeters on the cusp of sleep. Next morning,
the whining, ungrateful mind arises unconsoled,
and the body must begin its cajoling all over again.