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....

Loneliness

i swallow my loneliness,
a handful of liquid thistles.
my congealing blood flows
smooth as a gravy avalanche.
i sip the hemlock of separation till it
disappears into the glass that contains it.

Separation

gray,
shades of black.
the lack of color is cold.

only she has color,
only her color has warmth,
only her warmth has life-
her life moves ankle-deep
through gray powder.

the powder covers
living backs,
flowers, trees, birds
and the singled roofs
of dark houses.

the sky:
one shade of gray
except far on the horizon
where it is black,
one shade of gray
with gray powder falling,
cold, bleak,
forever
gray

Without You

winter; the woods
empty; the axe
sunk in a stump;
its thud a sob
startling the sleep
of a dreamer
waking, calling
where am i? who
is there?

Paper Afternoon

paper afternoon
a stage set in broad daylight-
life away from you

Work Day Blues

the grand old poem
called "work day" came round
again, without any
connivance from me.
i looked out the window
and saw the faded
gray pavement where just
lately I kissed you.

it seemed as if your
departure came without
any interval
since your arrival-
i wasn't prepared
to see you scamper
away so quickly.

i wondered if i'd
dreamed you, but i saw
you took time to take
your breakfast, lunch, hand-
bag and coffee cup

your departure came
fast as falling snow.
it's a wonder i
didn't lose my sani-
ty; one instant you're
beside me, the next
you have disappeared.

weekdays love this rhyme
so well, they never
tire of repeating
it, so sweet and whole-
some is the work day,
simple and moder-
ate, satisfacto-
ry and perfect, that
her children never
weary of it either.

what a poem! an
epic in blank verse
enriched with a mill-
ion tinkling rhymes.
it is solid beau-
ty. it has been sub-
jected to the vic-
issitudes of mill-
ions of years and not
a single super-
fluous moment is
left unmolested.

Love and How It Gets that Way

to walk in love
through the everybody else crowd,
protected by love,
lulled by love,
dulled by love,
the crowd itself a love,
no single object anywhere that is not love,
the breath love,
love, love everywhere
and still not enough.

and then there's no love,
or little love or less love or more love,
but love, always love,
and if you have love
or you don't have love
it is the love that counts
and love makes love,
but what makes love
make love?

Tidal Surge

my soul aches
since cross words tempest tossed love's
pacific ocean
still damp from the surging tide
sand dries seaward from the edge