Communicating

Lack of communication is the single greatest factor in the destruction of relationships. Often there are crossed patterns of communication, with one partner speaking past the other instead of to him.

Sweet Suicide

Confuse love and romance too long and you end up a suicide. Aloneness is the final, undeniable reality of life.

The Fantasy

At 13, it seemed so confusing. I had to check out the symptoms in the “Facts of Love and Life” — quickening pulse, heavy breathing. What a thrill to know that I had turned someone on. And the fantasy of potency, marking good night kisses on the calendar.

What A Mess

Wish I could say something about love, lust, marriage, jealousy and divorce. Boy, have I made a royal mess of these. I think my major problem has always been to reconcile my desire for a “true love” with a more universal kind of feeling. They are both so different.

Making A Marriage Work

When asked “am I happily married,” my unquestioning response is yes. But why? Before I was married, I definitely felt a need for love, something deep, and someone to whom I could completely open up without being afraid of rejection.

What Shall God Fear?

I have wanted you, wanted you, out of what? love? need? true love is not possessive, jealousy is a learned response, but oh god, how to let go? how to love you, not own you, how to let you be?

Orally Yours

Ah yes, thinking back of the turbulent history of mouths and fingers, mouths and toes, not only makes my mouth water, but my toes as well. Toes and fingers, once thought to be good only for the production of hangnails, are enjoying an erogenous zone revival, especially when coupled with the inside of one’s mouth.

The Good Times

Here I am, at the end of another long-term relationship. This time seems easier than the last, but I can’t really tell — time blurs my memory out of focus.

You Can’t Lose Him

Can’t you understand? Can’t you see people cannot live together, freely and with love, till they have learned to live alone, to be alone . . . Neither he nor you are at that point.

Sexuality

Many people suffer physically and emotionally from the dearth of honest, objective information about human sexuality. We are told: Sex is everywhere. Enjoy it.

[Warm fantasies are easy to weave]

Warm fantasies are easy to weave on this pleasant, sunny day. I look into people’s faces as if well acquainted with their pain and joy.

Untitled

A friend insists he’s got a major New York publisher

A friend insists he’s got a major New York publisher interested in this. We pass along, without comment, his table of contents, penciled crudely on a Kleenex.

• Conventional. Nasal-nasal front rubbing position.

Sy’s New York Diary

The city so easy, after all, alive for me like some lover never truly left behind, never truly known: the perfumes, the hidden places, the exquisite fears and sweet temptations of the night.

A Slightly Biased View

Selected Poems

Selected Poems

[Love seeks to encompass]