Aubade to Marit, Never Read

                                I.

Now let us go to contemplate that hill
Where flowers spring from seeds, intent to show
Unfastened bits to daybreak's primrose glow
Like tumblers hurled up by one boy's thrill
At making sky go dark and rooftop still
From burst of liberated doves who know
That boys stay stuck, while they are free to go.
Yet doves return; they lack a young boy's will.
Night prods, commands her new moon to retire,
Pulls back an opaque curtain as I think
Of how we might employ dawn's feathered fire
To draw you tickled out and to the brink
And there, with pink unfurled, probe your desire.
Yet you demur; and so, like thoughts, we sink.

                                II.

We have, with fingers fixed on abacus,
Found too few days to let them pass in haste.
So rather than stay consummately chaste,
Let's tinker with the private parts of us.
First, from the firmament magnanimous
I'll steal a string of stars to gird your waist.
Should firmament demand they be replaced,
We'll chuck the chore to cuckold Calculus.
But in the meantime, once more to that hill -
to ride your string of stars like carousel
From dawn to dusk and only there to dare
To ask aloud how we might then fulfill
Our task if we have merely stars to sell
When we find paradise. Or do you care?

                                III.

Now think about this hill as paradise -
Upon it, and like giddy antelope,
Sure-footed, love takes hearts to highest slope
Where even knavish prudence may suffice
To gainsay quick elopement - lust's device.
Once there, I'll show how Cupid through twin scope
With steady aim at boastful thing called hope,
Would shoot to stick our vows not once, but twice.
There too, we'll finally strip that robe that hides
And chides your flesh to keep itself discreet,
Remote, and from my own, quite separate.
Then I, with dawn - which over hilltop rides -
Will slide upon you like a silken sheet,
Yet for the artful task, stay temperate.

                                IV.

First stretching, old man sun climbs up from hill,
To prod his infant dawn to faster pace
Lest through equivocation, we lose place
And settle for some vagabond's cheap swill.
So let me ask what love will drive you still
When ice-bound nights through howling winds give chase
To lovers' lyre and summer's last embrace
Since now - with lust denied - I sense a chill.
Real love, you claim, works best by standing toe
To toe with neighbors over crusty fence
When snow lies still or crickets strut their stuff.
While lust, you say, would in its frenzied flow
Play fast like gypsy jazz, spare no expense,
But then, just lounge about when times get tough.

                                V.

Sends sullen, swollen glowworms home to bed,
Rebukes their frantic gluttony, now fed.
About to leave, night looks with mother's scorn
Upon this child of sun and lover, morn -
A bastard kid, who has with antics bled
Quick fireflies of light and left instead
Night bald, and of her stars, completely shorn.
Then sun, at last, remarks your odd restraint
And sends to moon a condescending frown,
Which she reflects with patient, silver grace.
Both sun and moon repeat their just complaint
And from departing clouds, receive their crown,
Then, in the end, take back their private place.

More About Russell Bittner:

Russell is a Brooklyn-based fetishist whose highest pair of heels resides in poetry. What he does late at night, behind locked doors and with the lights out, has been published in paper by: The American Dissident; The Blind Man's Rainbow; The Lyric; The Barbaric Yawp; The International Journal of Erotica; and, in September, Wicked Hollow. On-line, his poems can be found at: ken*again.com; ink-mag.com; erotica-readers.com; Quintessence-encouraginggreatwriting.com; and spillwayreview.com. His prose has enjoyed a quicker death, a shorter fate in: Satin Slippers.com; ink-mag.com; and DeadMule.com.
He is currently (read: once again) unemployed - as God, his witness, has willed that he should never be wealthy. And so, he spends his days with two little snickerbockers he'd like to think he sired - at least 50% worth. Nights, however, are a regular ménage-à-trois with poetry and Martell, V. S. - who does not, of course, go gentle into any of them.
His first novel, Trompe l'oeil, is nearing completion.

You can email Russell at RRBrklyn@aol.com.