The flowers: Where have they been?
I've excluded them. The rose is falling,
sogged with too much rain.
You did not need to cry that much.

I'm hiking up the ridge again
this time with a new flame,
a recovering alcoholic who sends me
an unusual amount of text messages.
When she talks she sounds like me.

Her eyes are owls.
They have wide, hooting pupils
constantly asking "Who?"
When I first saw her she was hidden
in her own arms and a rambling purple scarf.
I did love her then.
I don't love her now.

It's a peculiar feeling
not being a fool for a beautiful girl
who's agreed to go on a date with me.
It's not a feeling at all.
The old feelings were rotten.
Was love one of them?
Love was all of them.
Rotten, possessed love.
Downtrodden, obsessed love.
Forgotten, confessed love.
Love song love.
Luther Vandross love.
Bing Crosby love.
The real stuff. The stuff that turns
you into a desperate, hurtin' man.

I try not to feel it anymore.
I am successful and
better off because of it.

The bud spills from the stalk
as blood tumbles from a bullethole.
The sun is high and it is breaking
the wild cucullia into crisp, dry weeds.
The sun is killing the grass.
It does not mean to.

It only wants to watch.
It watches too closely.
The grass dies.