Hymn to Post-Orgasmic Neurasthenia

I feel I am a summer bee
That has misplaced its sting,
A thrush that’s lost its voice the day
After it starts to sing.

And you could try to ask me why
I give away my soul.
It’s one of those unlucky things
That are beyond control.

‘Cause self-abuse transports a man
While he is sitting still.
His ticket: that, by his own hand,
Vitality did spill.

His journey is internal, though;
No space here is traversed.
His senses and his mood, they go
To other places cursed.

I’m talking of the aftermath,
Of once the load is blown,
Of once the nerves’ fantastic bath
Subsides and leaves you lone.

Am I repressed because I feel
A hollow feeling spread?
My guilt and black despair congeal
Around a lonely bed?

My wife, of intercourse, because
Of me, was mad, she said.
A broth of married ardor was
Mixed with a stew of dread.

She said, when I told her about
My orgasm’s sequelae,
That I was being too devout:
A casus conscientiae.

“Each climax will be judged by God
At Paradise’s door.”
I told my wife my hang-ups odd –
She’s not my wife no more.

Let’s leave theology aside,
With science let’s conclude:
A neurochemical low tide
Can’t help but alter mood.

The chicken or the egg, which came
On first: awareness of
God’s judgment or the neural drought
That comes from making love?

In contemplating the above
Did cavemen, post-coition,
Interpret the first inklings of
Their symptoms as perdition?

Of the man who feels such emptiness
It’s hard to explain why
His climax is worth much more
Than all they could come by.

Bliss followed by a void will yield
Enjoyment more intense,
As diamonds on a sable field
Gleam brighter, in a sense.

He trades tomorrow’s happiness
For pain that is today,
And leaves behind a tranquil mind
For momentary play.

I’ve raised an awful feeling but
Forgot what gave it life
Like one who can’t recall he checked
The edge of a penknife

And cuts his thumb repeatedly
Then asks how come the blood.
A learning disability
Of sorts pollutes my mood.

It seems I’ll never have the life
That comes from being wise.
Instead, I’m dead. My life repeats,
A scheme with no surprise.

My bills are overdue now that
My psychic credit’s gone.
Each night’s a mortal wound but there’s
One thing can heal me: Dawn.

Fugitive Completeness

Recall the large collection of x-rated magazines
     passed around by that curious freshman
from your dorm who had, with a Sharpie,
     carefully blacked out every hard-on,
and then eventually each man’s whole body,
     so finally the women appeared to fuck man-voids,
to perform page after page of phantom fellatio.

An invisible man’s presence could only be inferred,
     Not from limbs or hair or wrinkled sheets,
But from his female partner’s corrugated,
     Punctuated eyebrows,
Which took on a distressed symmetry
     Whenever she was in Venerean mirth.

The performance artist Nero, in his envy
     of all prior oratory contest-winners
in Rome, ordered each copy of their statues
     to be defaced, then hurled into public lavatories.
Soviet ministers out of favor were shot
     and edited like a pockmark out of group photos,
leaving behind outlines to be filled in
     by a team of terrified forgers.

The disfigured, the amputees, the ruins
     swim up at you from a clouded-over
sea floor of art history.
     Extrapolate all above the ankles since the feet
inside the display case are all you have left.
     Stripe out a line of cocaine for the Sphinx
to vacuum up with her missing nose.
     Handcuff the Venus de Milo.