details details

lick the salt off the saltines
wipe the sugar off the sugar cookies
wash the pepper off the pepper-steak

take it plain
take it unadorned
take it unheated, without the ice cream

bare bones
naked
nude

greg  the gymnast who lives next door
wears clothes
unless he stands in front of his
bedroom window
naked as the purple head of his
big stiff cock

he suspects I can see him from my
own bedroom window
I suspect

he closes the blinds tho
just before he gets really
involved in touching himself
all over
but I get to see the nipple-action
belly-button prodding

then he closes the blinds
a mona lisa grin on
his great-looking lips,
+ he finishes whatever he's doing to
himself in there

lick the salt off the saltines
wipe the sugar off the sugar cookies
bay at the moon

has anyone ever died from longing

a knock on his door
would help  perhaps
he's just waiting for my
knock

lick the wall
lick off the paint
lick off the plaster

another long night for me in store it seems

another saltine
without the salt
another sugar cookie without the sugar

the sound of knock knock knock
on his door
without the knock knock knock

--Carl Miller Daniels (This poem also appears in my book Shy Boys at Home, published by Chiron Review Press in 1999.)