hard not to gaze today — love day! at all the magic pictures

glowing, coursing over stranger's smooth wet form

vivid, living everywhere on his fair skin

so various! complex, compelling

feels like a need, a calling out from them to look

look here! look now! to see some more

what lurks behind? beneath? below?

hard to remember

strangely hard to tell

through narrowed chlorinated eyes

that over there is not some quiet curving canvas

still unframed, halfhidden now by steamroom steam

no . . . the medium is flesh, pure, alive

part of a person

a thinking feeling fearing sweating man

seated there on slick beige tiles, almost naked

so very close to me