Not an Anniversary Poem

For Julie (and For Me)

Here’s a celebration of our several adulteries:

hot and cold,

secret memories stashed between our ears,

behind our throats

where we hide our jewel box,

where we keep our fancy carvings.

Let’s keep on doing what we’re doing:

the incriminating emails, the furtive texts,

the phone sex, the anonymous motels,

waging, spy-on-spy, our erotic intrigues.

Let’s play party games:

Musical Chairs and Twister,

Red Light Green Light, Spin the Bottle, Switch.

Yeah! Let’s play Switch.

Make hay while the sun shines, gather rosebuds,

live life greedily.

Let’s be lewd and lovely,

corrupt and dirty and unrepentant.

Let’s be glorious in our sinning.

Let us honor, you and I,

the complex of betrayals underlying all our vows,

all those risks we take.

Ah, the risks we take.

The sacrifices that we make for satisfaction,

the covert pursuit of joy,

the dark aesthetic that we crave.

David is a 79-year-old former social worker/family therapist living in Buffalo, New York. In 2002, he resumed writing poetry after a 35-year hiatus. During that time, he carried a sandwich board in his head declaring him, “Poet. Not writing!” He has published about 100 poems in a variety of lit mags, such as Nimrod, Passages North, and Tidal Basin Review.