Van Gogh cut off his ear
gave it to a
*******
who flung it away in
extreme
disgust.
Van, ****** don't want
ears
they want
money.
I guess that's why you were
such a great
painter: you
didn't understand
much
else.

she's young, she said,
but look at me,
I have pretty ankles,
and look at my wrists, I have pretty
wrists
o my god,
I thought it was all working,
and now it's her again,
every time she phones you go crazy,
you told me it was over
you told me it was finished,
listen, I've lived long enough to become a
good woman,
why do you need a bad woman?
you need to be tortured, don't you?
you think life is rotten if somebody treats you
rotten it all fits,
doesn't it?
tell me, is that it? do you want to be treated like a
*******?
and my son, my son was going to meet you.
I told my son
and I dropped all my lovers.
I stood up in a cafe and screamed
I'M IN LOVE,
and now you've made a fool of me. . .
I'm sorry, I said, I'm really sorry.
hold me, she said, will you please hold me?
I've never been in one of these things before, I said,
these triangles. . .
she got up and lit a cigarette, she was trembling all
over.she paced up and down,wild and crazy.she had
a small body.her arms were thin,very thin and when
she screamed and started beating me I held her
wrists and then I got it through the eyes:hatred,
centuries deep and true.I was wrong and graceless and
sick.all the things I had learned had been wasted.
there was no creature living as foul as I
and all my poems were
false.

little dark girl with
kind eyes
when it comes time to
use the knife
I won't flinch and
i won't blame
you,
as I drive along the shore alone
as the palms wave,
the ugly heavy palms,
as the living does not arrive
as the dead do not leave,
i won't blame you,
instead
i will remember the kisses
our lips raw with love
and how you gave me
everything you had
and how I
offered you what was left of
me,
and I will remember your small room
the feel of you
the light in the window
your records
your books
our morning coffee
our noons our nights
our bodies spilled together
sleeping
the tiny flowing currents
immediate and forever
your leg my leg
your arm my arm
your smile and the warmth
of you
who made me laugh
again.
little dark girl with kind eyes
you have no
knife. the knife is
mine and i won't use it
yet.

I never saw a man who looked
with such a wistful eye
upon that little tent of blue
which prisoners called the sky,
and at every drifting cloud that went
with sails of sliver by.

I walked, with other souls in pain,
within another ring,
and was wondering if the man had done
a great or a little thing,
when a voice behind me said,
"The man's got to swing"

For he did not wear scarlet
nor did he speak of it,
for blood and wine were red
and so was the color on his bed.

He looked upon the garish day
with such a wistful eye;
the man had killed the thing he loved,
and so he had to die.

My heart is red, the meadow is green;
you are standing there in your silk dress
and looking at me longingly, with your eyes
your eyes of feline longing, Mon amour.

I wish to soothe that longing, wishing
to souls above, let me take you on my dreamboat,
my dreamboat of love,

Soothe the ache, from the punch I did not deliver.  

Protect and shelter you in my arms, so that I may be one
with you, in bed, forever and ever
until I'm dead, severed from you.
But I will find my way back to you,
even if it comes to that.

Soon... We will meet in the flesh.
and this ache will subside.

Soon I will hold you, and soothe your sadness at mankind's ways.
Soon I will be the man you deserve too

fearful men sprout wings
but hero and coward fly
different directions