Robert Creely imitation—
“The Warning”

I wish my hands were bigger so that I could hold more of you;
that my arms would grow longer to wrap around you like mummified linens.
I wish I could exhume your deepest secrets like an unstuffed taxidermy;
pull them out, pile them up, and print them in the dailies.
I wish I could pluck your out your eyes,
stringing them like Christmas lights that would glow through July.
I wish I could trace your outline with police chalk,
so I could snap photographs of your curves to shelve in the evidence room.
I wish I could crack your breasts like eggs, pouring them into a molding cast
to preserve them in bronze marvels at an excavation.
I wish I could rip off your ears like pink mushrooms growing along trunk roots;
clasping them up to my throat so you can hear every sweet nothing whisper.
I wish I could swallow the looping licorice crescents of your lips
savoring the finest cut of rare steak with each bite.
I wish I could knock out your teeth and tongue to keep in jars;
shaking an instrument the emanates the sound of your voice.
I wish I could replicate your hair, unsheathing strands like scrolled blueprints,
thumb-tacking each down to sketch the angles with a pencil.

For bigger, for better, for more of you, I would.
And yes,
For love-I would split open your head
and put a candle in behind the eyes.
When I say I love you, this is what I mean: I am never satisfied with being close enough.
I wish I could graft myself to you with a blow torch,
heating our skin until it melts together.
Like when our fingers intertwine into a ball of squirming snakes,
hungrily swallowing each other to get warm.
I want to cross section every piece of you,
So that I can know you inside and out like my own personal Mudder Museum.