On A Desert Island

Five floors up on the elevator: I was too
   thin, almost collapsed from humidity outside,
but Jennifer, the knowledge of her insides,
   held me up, with luggage we carried through.
Why the compulsion was there, prodded us
   into instant betrayal, I cannot say or know now—
      clothes got piled sloppily, hotly, on a rug, brown
as always at the Atherton Hilton, clean, fussed
   for breaking, entering, conventioneers, academics,
      now two incredibly horny, moody adolescents.

Soon, the room was a desert island, the bed a sand-dune.
   We were washed ashore after fucking, over & over.
No one in history had been so marooned with a lover.
   Every time I touched her, I risked rousing a monsoon.
Wave after wave broke, entered. We didn't exist
   except as pistons in a tropical engine. Glasses of water,
      occasional baths, a little TV, body-boundaries slaughtered,
so that when we hit the Arts Fest, it didn't resist.
   My brain had spokes spinning the wrong way, but
      she took the Pandora's Box & nailed it shut.

What was backed up for her: everything, nothing.
   I had no yen for anything but to survive. Nights there
were like days. We never had leave to figure out where
   we were. Tunnels spiraled down & up: something
heaved, out in the world. Someone under the bed
   seemed to be nudging us; maybe how we'd been
       reduced to carnage. Being in her: what I was in
was sheets rumpled, no maid, dementia in the head.
    We ate nothing: crackers, occasional food on College Ave.
        Once I spun to McLanahan's: lines crazy, bodies mad.

What kind of marriage could be born from this?
   Justice of the Peace be damned, only two kids on fire
for each other, from a place not without depth, kissed
   by strange fate into each other, hard-wired
to memorize only two-in-one harmony, could know
   or see, as we wrestled only to fall deeper into space
      held together not at all, spiraling into boundlessness—
fragile, evanescent, bloody-minded into callousness
    against the loveless, timid hordes, not ready to face
       anything but this— we could only be there, then go—