O blush not so! O blush not so!
      Or I shall think you knowing;
And if you smile the blushing while,
      Then maidenheads are going.

There's a blush for want, and a blush for shan't,
      And a blush for having done it;
There's a blush for thought, and a blush for nought,
      And a blush for just begun it.

O sigh not so! O sigh not so!
      For it sounds of Eve's sweet pippin;
By these loosen'd lips you have tasted the pips
      And fought in an amorous nipping.

Will you play once more at nice-cut-core,
      For it only will last our youth out,
And we have the prime of the kissing time,
      We have not one sweet tooth out.

There's a sigh for aye, and a sigh for nay,
      And a sigh for "I can't bear it!"
O what can be done, shall we stay or run?
      O cut the sweet apple and share it!

My father was born in an outport community of 2000
On the Avalon peninsula of Newfoundland
Around 1950, to a school headmaster and a homemaker
Attended Memorial University of Newfoundland (as did I)
Studied English, and eventually Education

He was a brilliant man, often quiet for long periods of time,
Then viscerally eloquent like Occam's Razor when he spoke
Remember him telling me how "taking their maidenheads"
From Romeo and Juliet act one, was about taking virginity
Always had an answer for my million questions
Rarely lost his temper

Taught me to accept others as they were, and to resist the temptation
To judge

A spiritual man, not religious, always taking care to differentiate the two

Without him I would never have access
To the home library in our den, my muse
Or all the gruesome movies he shouldn't have let me watch

Without my father I wouldn't know that
I like Jack Daniel's on the rocks with afternoon paper or
A Farewell to Arms with Spanish Rioja from earthenware cups,
Like Hemingway drank during the Spanish Civil War

I would not have wallowed with the downtrodden and the vilified
I would not have seen the base human weakness
The fundamental vulnerability that dwells within all of us
Had I not seen it in him first

Some four years ago, my father experienced weakness on one side
While on vacation in Europe
Flew back to Canada, diagnosed quickly with brain cancer
By the time I spoke to him, his mind was already rapidly fading
The spark of brilliance snuffed out like so much wick and wax

Died 6 months later in his sleep
We spread his ashes on his father's grave
And in the Bay St. George

Taught me what and how to believe,
Who to be
For better or for worse
Taught me how to ask the right questions
Showed me the books to read
Let me know it was OK
To be me

I'm having fists of laughter, daisy-cutter dreams in formaldehyde,
creating the worlds most loved sport by kicking the heads of Danes.

Mutually assured corruption I can feel
creeping down the inside of my nostril,
across my tiny hairs,
but I am still, let it come;
it runs out and onto my lips. I **** its mercurial
clearness down.

I was born without fingernails or teeth,
forever stuck gumming the soft pink nail beds.

I keep everyone out of my life;
it is the only way to justify never seeing you.
Desiccant children pour from their mothers' laps
as if they were clear beads from that little paper shoe box packet.

You are an apricot full of sand;
I am a Mongol stealing maidenheads.

A peach is a rose -
deep inside
drips cyanide.

you think the heads
hung on your wall
define you,
prove your masculine worth.

to me,
they are a warning
to stay far away.

women and animals
are not yours.

we are not yours,
we are not trophies for your wall,
we are not notches for your bedpost,
we are not prizes to be won.

yet you would treat us as such,
equate me and my sisters
with the lion in the savannah,
and reduce us to what you can take.

you would hang us on your wall,
furs and maidenheads,
displaying us as symbols of your prowess.

we do not exist to stroke your ego,
to let you show off to the others,
to have you carry us as the mantle on your shoulders,
the crown upon your head.

our blood,
the lioness and mine,
is on your hands and your walls,
and we will make you regret it.

In a high school wood shop class, 1 ****, blondish teacher clamped
onto my hard-nut sass with a wet tail to jam it into my lard-**** ***.

"Prey of Niger, A.D. 2072," excerpt: Fifteen tribesmen overtook my ***** *** after 5 miles. I was exhausted. I had no experience with desert extremes. The chief ****** said that I could sleep in his mud-hut mansion for an hour before they butchered me. He was pleasant enough, except for his cannibalistical zeal. In another life we could've got along like Siamese twin brothers, I guess.
      Swanky Negresses danced with their hoods ablated. I'd seen sails flapping in the breeze off the Horn, but this was fantastical, like pucked maidenheads shorn by tomahawks.