I feel like I’ve been shot in the stomach,
Everything I try to say
Won’t come out

As cool as the pale wet leaves
                of lily-of-the-valley
She lay beside me in the dawn.

her cheeks, normally the color of moonlit marble,
burned.
all the rest of her had flushed, lending what little color she had
to that blush.

her eyes, deep and speckled sapphire,
drowned.
those lashes, longer than hell, dipped with the burden of those
tears she cried.

her hair, darker than ink in a starless night,
hung.
glossy raven tresses framed that sweet face, gently brushing
her teary chin.

She inquired my reason; asked me: "Why?"
I said, "You're Beautiful when you cry.”

some say we should keep personal remorse from the
poem,
stay abstract, and there is some reason in this,
but jezus;
twelve poems gone and I don't keep carbons and you have
my
paintings too, my best ones; its stifling:
are you trying to crush me out like the rest of them?
why didn't you take my money? they usually do
from the sleeping drunken pants sick in the corner.
next time take my left arm or a fifty
but not my poems:
I'm not Shakespeare
but sometime simply
there won't be any more, abstract or otherwise;
there'll always be mony and ****** and drunkards
down to the last bomb,
but as God said,
crossing his legs,
I see where I have made plenty of poets
but not so very much
poetry.