Throughout my life I've pledged to make you mine.
As if, by wish, this vow would then come true.
So, would I practice words of pretty rhyme,
and, with my heart, would offer them to you.
Oh, how I wish myself to be a poem;
To enter through your eyes into your heart.
For it is there I wish to make my home.
I cannot bear that we should ever part.
But sometimes, when I search to see your face;
I, startled, see you looking back at me!
Could God, in kindness, spare a gift of grace;
or does He smile on simple fools as we?

Still, artfully I do the things I do.
The world might sing if I could speak to you.

This is a lonely poem,
a half an hour before dawn poem,
a poem like an empty kitchen –
a godforsaken (god, I'm shaking)
feeling like I just want to go home
poem. (and I am home)

I would bring you lunch just to watch you walk
across the field; you reminded me, then,
of a young Fidel Castro. I had just
read his prison letters, and was feeling like
maybe we didn't set enough things on fire.

At night, we played games; I would call you
Comandante and undress you, trying
not to smile when I spoke of the uprising,
but I always did. Some nights, my mouth on
your skin and all of those fires not lit

and all of those things  left standing
made the world seem too big and my torch seem
too small; I could never be brave enough.
On those nights, you kept my heart in my chest
with your grenade-throwing arm, tenderly.