If I desire to love you now in ways I’ve never loved you

[joel]

If I desire to love you now in ways
I’ve never loved you, maybe I’d admit
my culpability for yesterdays
of less-than-honest feats of intimate
encounters: choreographies of truths
I’d hoped would trick theatric trust in me
and costumes of a love acceptable—
so naked now – exposed, susceptible
to ridicule, defenseless, weak and free
for close examination like those frozen youths
of classic statuary celibate –
examine me for active, candid praise,
a model spine by which invertebrate
excuses of my past to love might raise.