I could not stare into anyone’s eyes too long.

It was like staring openly at the sun.

The light was too much to bear.

Not to mention,

within the stunning freight of light

projected from eyes were congealed

glittering specks and motes bearing

shame, longing, innocence,

volumes more.

My eyes

looking at other eyes

looking at me

made for dizzying

and disorienting foreplay.

Foreplay not as precursor to sex

bur rather the meekest intimacies

of childhood’s inheritance

revealed in eyelock.

In eyelock we meet

and look away

even when still looking at.

We look away within.

Then the eyes follow suit.

Sometimes they don’t

and you go deeper

and foreplay leads to frictive rubbing

of tenderest wounds,

scarry stories to tell in the dark.

The eyes beacon aspects of self

–hidden, remote, sublime–

high-wattage, and it goes into me,

intravenous jolt and subtext,

and I slip 20,000 leagues

under sea change and unmarked wrecks.

Once I sink,

I want to keep sinking,

I want to stay there,

savoring the opiate depths

and sighing aaaaahhh softly.

The eyes, in their staggering catalog

and akashic record,

are a lot to digest.