Made a Life of Letting

True love

keeps falling out of the bed. Every time I’ve scraped the vertebrae

to kiss it

it is gone

like a nightmare meeting

morning.

How do I allude to a morning that happened quite

specifically in my own left

eyeball:

I used to say years ago

we’d make the love that would

crack

me

like

ice

-but the past is nobody-

-the past is a landless bastard-

the past is not

landed

and is no land at all.

I have made a life of finding my own

darkness unexceptional

I have made a life of letting men

I have made a life of letting men

slump on my breast

You should be ashamed of yourself.

(Shame is like mold, it is the bastard of nature.)

As if I did not possess my own

humble cuneiform,

I am going to hold him in my mind

and cut his arms off arm

by arm:

I will hold him in my mind

until lovingly I push him off

the deck.

At the marina, cover your

lap with microfleece:

Put the seat back. Like a child.

The cypress sways, and the light will lower

from brutal to gold.

Listen to the old song, the one where the girl says,

if you were a shepherd I could love you.

I would like to forget how you fell out of my bed.

(If you were a shepherd I could love you.)

I would like to forget the morning on that indifferent

cliff. (If you were a shepherd I could

I would like to forget