How to Love in These Last Days

i.

all i want to do
is love you famous

all i want to do
is burn my initials into your soul

all i want to do
is write my love
from the middle of an erupting volcano
standing in the fast lane of the
lava flow

the world as it's become
eats its inhabitants

i'd rather
sell arms to the devil
than wait sullenly for
approval from a diseased clown with a
three-piece mind

telling me that i should love through a
bullet-proof pair of rose-colored glasses

i want to be
hated
by Everybody Else who
proselytizes hearts and minds

i want people to hear about my love
and get headaches
i want people to hear about my love
and vomit

i want people to hear about my love
and weep, scream, disappear, start bleeding,
eat their television sets, beat each other to death with

swords and

get out and get riotously drunk on
someone else's money


ii.

love ain't no democratic process
love ain't no populist agenda
love ain't foolin' a

grab-bag of
clever wordplay and sensitive thoughts and
gracious theories about
how many ambiguities can dance on the head of a
hallmark card

love ain't no
genteel discussion over
cappuccino and collective consciousness

love ain't no chest-thumping

These Last Days have meaning
as we watch the planets and stars fall from heaven

they ain't no letter press, hand-me-down,
wimpy lovefest about
the broken rainbow

they are a carnival of dread

they are a savage sideshow
about to move into the main arena

they are the thief in the night stealthily slipping
in and out of our lives
stealing a precious gem and leaving paste

they are terror and wild beauty
walking hand-in-hand down a bombed-out history
as missle scream while a
sky the color of arterial blood
blinks on and off
like the light on broadway
after the last junky's dead of
aids....


iii.

i come not to bury love
but to blow it up
not dandle it on my knee
like a handicapped child with
beautiful eyes
but
throw it off a cliff into
icy seas and
see if my unsated soul can
swim for its life

because soul-love is expensive
sorely needed

but....

there is so much iron pyrite these days
apathetic love with a chip on its shoulder
a chip as big as the empire state building
and heavier than
all the bills it'll never be able to pay
because these ARE the Last Days

Everybody Else is hawking radioactive jared-diamond-love
and victoria-secret-lingerie-love that
lowers the iq by fifty points per eye full

the vast masses believe
practicing half-hearted love
is the best way to combine caress and career

we're accosted by comercial love
with eyes like wet stones
peering out from the pages of
glossy magazines
promising that it'll
make us love till we bleed
if we just buy on of their switch-blade versions of love....