The snake curled around my arm is not jewelry.
Go ahead; touch it.

Oh dear. I should have warned you
that I sometimes give terrible advice.

Never mind. Let me **** out the venom,
even if never quite enough--

and if my lips taste bitter as I kiss you, darling,
I apologize.

Please, while there's still time,
be kind
by whispering me your forgiveness--
my love so saturnine.

Before loving a ghost,
understand--
it will be a tricky business.

A ghost will not wear the dress you like.
She will ignore
the meal
the Merlot
and the Mozart.

A ghost does not believe in the future that you've planned.
To a ghost,
the future is feathers made of fog
on a bird that flies away before it is born.

A ghost will not wear your ring.
She will not bear your child, or even your touch.
She is an airy
indigo
butterfly
that can hurt you, and will.

Yes, this looks like a job for Bad Poetry Man!
making bad as bad can... be. Oops.
Smashing through fussy form and tired trad topics
like a colorful bird with an inner ear problem in the tropics!

"Just journal!" cries Bad Poetry Man with a grin!
Turn on your head faucet and get everything in!
Blah blah about your boyfriend, blah blah about the world!
Chitter chatter is the thing that matters, girl!

POW! to that editor who rejected your haiku about jewelry!
BIFF! to that teacher with her structure tomfoolery!
WHAM! to the fussbudget who simpered about stanzas!
OOF! to anyone who judges your extravaganzas!

Bad Poetry Man is here! Make some noise! Give a cheer!
Write about yourself in third person if you want to, dear!
Compose five thousand lines about the oceans that you cried
when you forgot to feed it and your bowly goldfish died!

Wait! Don't throw that poem about mildew away!
Bad Poetry Man is here to save the day!
Prize it, post it, your Aunt Matilda said it was "nice!"
In pidgin, incomprehensible, inane, something something -ice!

I fell in love with your shadow
and lay on the floor with it while you slept.
We had an affair, your shadow and I
while you made mine visit your parents in Buffalo.

I became contemptuous of you there in bed
reading your stupid pop novels.
You became contemptuous of me on the floor
claiming a headache for the thousandth night in a row.

After the divorce, we sat at outdoor tables with friends
who nodded while we droned and overshared,
laughing, shaking our papier mâché heads, ******* down coffee
as the sun went right through us to the sidewalk, bright af.

I have two sharks inside me
swimming in tandem and holding my heart
between them like a little family
walking in the dark.

I send them gulps of air from outside
as if I were some sort of oxygenated charity
with a face and feet, operating in the world
on their behalf like a proxy or prosthetic.

Oh fishies, confined and angry in the bowl of my ribs,
here come those old blues again.
Why does life go on so long, demand so much,
slowly dribbling out the cracked glass of years?

I have had ideas all along, fine ideas
to open a ministry in a dumpster,
a ballroom in an attic, a cemetery
on a space station with the whole Earth for Ouija board.

I'm scared, fishies. Will the moon call you
and will you answer her tidal madrigal?
Will she require three voices, you and my heart?
Will you rise in glory, leaving me hollow, in salt and sorrow?

Every movie can be improved by adding a hungry tiger into it--
a bullet-proof tiger who can talk, but
only speaks in aphorisms and maxims.
The tiger's voice should sound like broad green leaves
and love language.

High Noon with Gary Cooper, bad guys, and a bullet-proof tiger.
Citizen Kane with a talking tiger on a sled.
Casablanca with a tiger behind the bar, saying,
"Love is like the stripes of a zebra;
bright and dark touching but still apart and always moving."

Real life could be enhanced as well.
The tiger could eat people who don't allow their dogs upstairs,
who cut in line, and who take duckface selfies.
"An apple a day keeps the doctor away!"
the tiger would say while standing over their bones,
full with both flesh and satisfaction.

You could come over.
We can watch movies--with tigers in them!--
spouting maxims and bromides,
wrestling feverishly with each other and with the notion
of tigers knowing anything about zebras or hearts
except that they are foolish things
made of meat
and consumable.

Go down to the greenhouse and gather the blooms,
then scatter them all in separate rooms--
the rose on the grate of the fireplace cold
to lie there and die there as we grow old.

The arrangements are odd and enigmatic,
the occupants frail and most asthmatic
afflicted with allergies, fear and despair
made worse by the stale and fetid air.

Though we gasp our devotion like fish in a boat
and confess our passion by rite and rote,
we're as blinkered as babes, as clear as bells
as we rise from the drink on our half-assed shells.