Can't hear it on the radio

MY CRUSH

I never saw more of your unsunned skin than
the bus driver or the chainsaw salesman
or that waitress in that barely possible town,
unless they saw more than me
by accident or arrangement
or some other calculus of random passion
I don’t even want to consider
and yet here I’ve invited
all of us into the present tense
as though it were a garden party
exploding with gladiolas
and polite sipping and pained
concern for the lacerated kidneys
of someone distant, half-known but in that light
assigned a measure of imminence
which seems proper
to everyone in accord
before that pain is exhausted
as pain always is
and everyone begins to shimmer
in their own pains,
the knees in name only,
spines full of wire, fused bone and pain management,
vein stripped
from the arm
like a black weed,
and wherever I am in all of this or
wherever all of this
is within me,
through the gate into dusk you’ve gone like the day.