They never saw my lover’s face,
   They only know our love was brief,
Wearing awhile a windy grace
   And passing like an autumn leaf.

They wonder why I do not weep,
   They think it strange that I can sing,
They say, “Her love was scarcely deep
   Since it has left so slight a sting.”

They never saw my love, nor knew
   That in my heart’s most secret place
I pity them as angels do

   Men who have never seen God’s face.

I knew she was sad --
Not because there were
tears in her eyes
But because there were
Grey clouds in them
Swirling chaos in her mind
Thorns around her throat
Poison in her heart
And a tired smile
On her bleeding lips
And the love she knew
Never thought that
She's really that sad

Karma was a dancer
at the Déjà Vu,
trading fantasies a few days a week
for *****, crumpled bills and
then living the dream on her days off.
That was before I knew her.
Before she faded just a little.

Which is not to say
that she was no longer beautiful
with her mermaid hair,
the color somewhere between
phosphorescent amber and
burning chestnut brown,
down to her *** and falling all around
her painfully sensuous curves.

The faint pucker lines 'round her mouth,
that liver spot,
a slight, barely discernable paunch,
I could see such things, too but
they only endeared me to
the façade of some silly notion
a kin to forever.

We would stay up late,
even on the weeknights,  
wine silly and
**** chatty.
She would dance
and I would tell her
****** poems in exchange.
It seemed like a good trade
to me but the truth is,
she was being shorted in the deal.

We said,
I love you
but I’m not sure we knew
that we didn’t really have that
to offer one another.
Both of us had sold more
than we had ever bargained for
long before we met.

When money ran thin and
times grew hard
she split.

Hope still stops by on occasion.
(She was a dancer, too).
But it seems a bit easier to distinguish
differences between the faux
and the genuine these days.
She doesn’t stay long.

I like to blame it all on Karma
despite knowing that I was just never
quite frugal or savvy enough to afford more than a few perfume-drenched moments at the foot of the stage.

I was in love
with Denise,
(She sat behind me in the third grade and
moved away in the first few weeks of the fourth),
but it was Tasha,
(who sat next to me and was the
best friend of Denise),
that I would fantasize about.
I would wait in some bush
for her to pass by and then
leap out
wearing a black ski mask and
armed with a rag drenched in chloroform.

The part of the fantasy that would
constantly change was
the way I would drag her back to my trailer.
Sometimes
I would have a Tasha-size duffle bag and
other times
I just dragged her by her feet
or grabbed her by her arm pits.
I often thought it would be smart
to bring my little red wagon.
except that I didn’t have one

In my fantasy it was always late morning
because that’s when my mom wasn’t home.

Once I had Tasha naked in my room
I would tie her hands with a rope secured
to the ceiling
I would pinch and poke and rub Tasha’s body
everywhere.
And stare
She would be blindfolded but
I would leave my ski-mask on
just to be safe,
in case Tasha’s blindfold fell off,
you know?

it’s hard to find chloroform when you’re
only eight.  

Anyway,
she would squirm and writhe and
wiggle
but soon she would change a little
and she would start to moan
she would gasp
and eventually
she would beg for more.

And then more Chloroform
I would drag her back
so that when she woke up
she would maybe think it was
just some fantasy SHE had.

But Denise,
when I dreamed of her
we just rode bikes and stuff.

I was in love with her.

There is this girl
cat lanky long
hair geometric and black
love right angular

There is this girl
moonlight faint
baby talking the plants
and they die

There is this girl
a burning in the throat
the sensation of something coming up
Acid reflux

There is this girl
who came back
and then left

There is this girl
twitching wet and frayed on the sheets
smoldering electric breaker trip
Coughing

There is this girl
licentiously staring at me
over the steering wheel
through the windshield
across the hood
racing the engine
black, black tire smoke
smiling

There is this girl
here on a holliday
a week long, all inclusive
get away

There is this ******* girl
wavy and swirling through the tears, still

There is this dog
two cats
no three
a lot of **** cats
there are these other dogs

There is this house
that felt like home
just once

There was this lady
who forgot her name
and got lost in the bathroom

I’m the man
not enough