i don’t mind
that you love him

just do it better

A man told me once that all the bad people

Were needed. Maybe not all, but your fingernails

You need; they are really claws, and we know

Claws. The sharks--what about them?

They make other fish swim faster. The hard-faced men

In black coats who chase you for hours

In dreams--that's the only way to get you

To the shore. Sometimes those hard women

Who abandon you get you to say, "You."

A lazy part of us is like a tumbleweed.

It doesn't move on its own. It takes sometimes

A lot of Depression to get tumbleweeds moving.

Then they blow across three or four States.

This man told me that things work together.

Bad handwriting sometimes leads to new ideas;

And a careless God--who refuses to let you

Eat from the Tree of Knowledge--can lead

To books, and eventually to us. We write

Poems with lies in them, but they help a little

you need to discover
if the two of you
are meant to sink or swim
in an ocean
other than the one
that you turn me into