The Secret About Sex, Maybe

I wonder if the secret about sex
is that nobody really likes it:
flustered, bluster tilts and blames:
frustration, guilt and shame’s
the game: all desire is transgressive.

The mire of body bumping body
gets progressively peculiar
as one nudges oneself onward in
the quest for it: I wonder if the best
that one can hope is that an act

of God will intervene before we get
to yet another impasse – or at least
(please) make us laugh. I had
the private and unnerving gift not
long ago of such abundant gorgeous

skin and muscle, frame and receptivity
that I do not begin to grasp why
my participation in the grapple with it
soon devolved into unending gaffe.
I do not understand the thing by half,

by which I think I mean my uncooperative
operative member. “Transgress
away,” it seemed to say, “but I would
rather have a different sort of day.”
And yet it’s not just that you can’t

persuade the thing, sometimes,
to play. Something stranger seemed
to get into the way. Mined for gold,
dug up coal. Maybe sex’s blasting last
exasperating secret is the soul.


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