Making an Offer on the Brooklyn Bridge

I have been long from home,
from the sight of an open field,
the forgetful pines,
even from the deer who chew
the heads off flowers planted by
the mailbox.
I’ve been simply stewing solitary,
I’ve been brewing, brooding, boiling, bubbling over in this city.

How do we translate the fumbling,
lucid poetry we create
when we are together, when
we are away from all others?
I wish I could read your volumes,
dog-ear gently your chronicled pages,
but instead I
crash along selfishly with, perhaps,
tercets, un-rhyming, ugly,
baldly blank and bashfully, badly, unsteadily
yet readily composed.
Sadly, these days, my mind cannot flow in free verse,
but instead only reverts to the constraints of form,
my memories written in reverse, explicated, I play my part, confessionary.

And how do we mediate this war between
obsessions and compulsions?
We can act on feelings, yes, but
quietly we will damn our guilty hands
come morning, when you
rise to leave before eight, and I make a move
to kiss your neck once more. Tell me,
if I cannot claim New York as mine,
nor yours, and certainly never
ours, am I a fool? And if I am delusional,
then why do I dream of
oddly erotic subway stations, where I may find a token,
and paying with these guilty hands,
ride their sleeping rails forever back toward uncertainty?