Ode to the Men of Erectile Dysfunction Commercials

Hail to you, gray-haired gentleman / on that summer porch. Let us put down / our fishing magazines and nod / sternly to your valor.

You have met her eyes, there on the wicker davenport / with a curtain of lush hemlock and hard / ash behind you, and between your eyes and hers has trickled the elicit recognition that you will now make love.

You have stepped up behind her and, broadly / but not desperately, / filled the saucepan of your square jaw / with the curving bratwurst of a smile.

Now we understand.

Under cover of night, you supervised / the hired crews and / their specialized equipment, a Terex 95-foot / boom crane, in order to / place the two clawfoot tubs just so / overlooking the canyon.

Order the scribes to begin penning record / of your deeds.

No other valley will be blocked to you. No glandular / failure will be your undoing /Conquerer! you’ll sing in the shower, / as she, draped like in the camisole you bought her, spreads / jam on toast for two.

Vamanos, friend.

Ten-inch water-treated planks. Your / sumptuous essence. Especially your / shoulders silhouetted against the setting sun / just above the mesa.

Two arms drape, connecting tubs / like the twin cable of a suspension bridge, / the engineering principals of which / do not escape your grasp.

Sweet repugnant virility.

Many men died from Caisson’s Disease during / the building of the Brooklyn Bridge / Never would you arise from /a trench only to die.

Your love is like the scrolling / asterisk’ed fine print appearing / now at the bottom of the screen. And your happiness / is an image, a fine gleaming logo around / which silver pin-pricks of light / race after, or toward, each other, tracing / the perimeters of the first stalwart letters, like mad dogs around /

a track