like that which we permit ourselves
the moment of eye contact after I’ve finished
jerking off in my room. How easy the
business is opened then tucked away, the discard
discarded, wiped, excised, or flushed,
tissues upon tissues solidifying like smashed
mosquitoes. And how completely natural it is
to keep secret, as I walk the neighborhoods,
tip my hat, take up my spot in line at
the pharmacy—nothing to see here, nothing to see.
Might a little public humiliation be such a bad idea?
After all, we love what disgusts us,
beribbon the body with our shame-food.
Then we wash away the stink and defoliate,
stuff the flailing animal back into its kennel,
the snake in the snake nut can. But
let’s face it, we’re all complicit. Even you—
my little green YouTube alien
miming Mr. Roboto from your bone cage.
You’re an abstraction of pure sexuality,
an aberration of early internet CGI
fed to me through the wormhole algorithm
of weird and probably helping to dream up
the animation porn of the future. It’ll be so realistic,
they say. Its genitalia-defying feats of lifelikeness
will render us impossibly horny, humanoids mute
with pleasure. For that, we seek repair.
For that, we can embarrass in good company. Just look at me.
I am beet red; I am plaid-insipid,
a stacking doll of self-hideouts within whom
I am a new body each time,
a new body in the old snow angel
of my privacy, prospecting this shame
for the peculiar shades of it,
for the want to show it.
