Found Rhymes, a Tease

No one taught me how to write
lines that will not offend you
when my feelings are laid bare.
Poetry is existence.
It was existence for Rilke, Whitman,
Sexton, and Williams who danced
naked in his room, and confessed
his understanding that in dancing
alone in his poem, he let the world
know he was being true
to an unfettered desire.
Reading his poem, the world might
realize that he could attest,
make a difference,
no longer be invisible.

Perhaps you, my favorite, in making visible
the thrusting pressure of your breasts,
made a statement, almost an insistence
that you are aware of the difference you make,
stretching backward over your seat to write
a tease, a poem for my eyes, a poem of fire
like Williams ignited in himself. I see you
and you watch me in my small world
of words, writing across my eyes, prancing.
You stretch backward again until you have nearly undressed
youthful shoulders, untanned breasts. You glance
at me, standing yet behind you. I wonder how Whitman
would have written himself into that moment of coexistence.
No doubt he, writer of all subjects, would dare
use free verse, a song to himself, a song for you
and the world. Poets, alone in their words, have taught me how to write.