As duck-faced lonely hearts fly right and left,

I have to take offense at the belief

that my or any love, not whol’ bereft

of even the pretense of a fig leaf

before the void that’s shaped just like my head,

could base the book review on just a page—

no less, osmose its better parts in bed—

but such is the voracious modern age.

I’ll ask if you believe in god and why,

(I’ll use the lower case, but “ask my ‘ex’…”)

and if the thing you’ll say will make me cry,

I’ll genuflect, and then I’ll think of sex.

I have no organ for it, by design;

She cut it off, and now I feel just fine.

Your absence breathes her warm breath on my nape,

pervading all the spaces you are not,

your outer bound, her complement in shape.

I cannot see her face; her touch is hot.

For always, she is with me, try I might

to lead her to a fence on some high cliff,

without offense, and see which one takes flight.

She wakes my dreams of flying with, “What if?”

Falling awake, I watch her disappear,

a breath I breathed, a body I had felt,

two eyes I saw, a voice I used to hear,

divine impulse to kneel to, as She knelt.

The image bears no likeness born of you.

Who knows what I would do, should she leave, too?

Gods, gift me the all-righting grace of cats,

for, when I fall, no hand will intercede.

“Trust” means another thing to acrobats;

the clowns could start an elephant stampede.

I trusted you as far as I could grasp

with knees wrapped ’round a hundred-foot trapeze,

and, when I’d let you go, the crowds would gasp.

Without a net, I feared the slightest breeze,

but I pretended gravity might cheat

if falling toward the heavens would restore

my perfect place in nature, at your feet

in Limbo ‘tween your poise and ‘neath the floor.

I never feel the ground beneath my shoe.

I could let go, to plummet up anew.

What god would clamor after Eris’ fruit?

The premise of the story is a jest!

Why should Athena care which one’s the beaut’?

This world is ruled by wits–gods, save the rest!

Fair Maiden, grand and wizened, rearing breast–

Horned Brother, prototype and king of men–

I know your mate is great, but you are best.

To them, your mind is wholly without ken.

The wiser of the two can claim my verse.

Forever, I will honor you in deeds.

Should you request, I would not be averse

to even tend your hearth and earthly needs.

(I think each one would forfeit to the other,

but, pressed to pick, they both would choose my mother.)

Great Mother, Harlot, Fortune, Fury–You–

What made me think that I could grasp your Name?

I clutched at gasps upon the wind and drew

a breath from out the ether, hot with shame,

and called her, “Harlot,” “Fortune,” “Fury,” “Strength,”

the arcane eight, for “Power,” “Glory,” “Love,”

but fell one short. I’d go to any length!

No furnace in the Earth or star above

burned hotly as this sullen, hanging man.

So deaf, so blind, was I, all heat, no light.

You didn’t keep your promise, but who can?

You had to disappear, but not with spite.

We sometimes reap the grains we did not sow.

I knew not we were “human.” Now, I know.

In truth, I’ll have to first admit she’s “cute.”

Few birds are blind, but blinder for the sense

in which I’ll hold her at a distance, mute,

and trace her wing as sight we both dispense.

But when the line within her beak turns round,

the sound of it is something very plain:

“I see you; hail.” My sense of vision found

a thing I do not think my eyes contain,

and neither will presume the other’s form.

Then both will spew their innards forthright out

to spring the artless traps, as to inform,

like turkey vultures, “Love you; it’s the norm.”

Some ugly ducks are sure they’ll find their swan;

some of us loons would feed on carrion.

“…No love!” he wails, the bleating of a lamb

enwrapped in bleeding pelts of wolves, still hot,

still shaking from the hunt. He adds, “God, damn!”

“God, damn all apex predators I’m not!”

He cuts the head ‘twould eat him, plucks the eyes

to substitute his own, and dons his mask.

One might not know by sight, but when he cries

not lamb nor wolf would even think to ask

if he were one of their or either’s fold.

Chimera, head of death and jaws of life,

the Narcissus alone, with lips of gold,

will sing you poetry and be your wife.

The one who kills the demons in his head

will wake to find his dreams for Earth are dead.

What “friendless, needy virgin” is–as me–

embarrassed by their peers’ servility

at altars to The Golden Apple Tree,

the cult of “winning” personality,

the God of many “i”s that cannot see,

that dominance is not maturity,

that empathy is not fragility,

that “suckers” in your selling strategy

will someday get the ego-boost for free

when they depose your ant-hill monarchy?

Who’s unafraid to buy sincerity?

Who puts their stake in love’s temerity?

I’ll gather all the ones you threw away.

We’ll wait our turn; it only takes a day.

All people choose the truth they will ignore.

We might not know the difference, but not one

of us has held the “perfect” truth before,

“The First of Truths,” “Creator of the Sun,”

that dogged us, in our ignorance, to know.

I chose a world of gods born of the Earth.

Perhaps it’s not a choice, the way Earth glows

in tactile shades of purple warmth and mirth

when feline-headed gods resembling you

take heaven’s politics within their paws,

subdue The Beast, hit Jesus with a shoe,

and snatch me out from Mammon’s smacking jaws.

Life is a dream up to the dream to make.

If you exist, I choose not to awake.

Three times, you gave your living heart to me–

not some idealized, lacey Valentine

in naive geometric symmetry–

you clawed it out, presented it for mine,

and watched as I consumed it, eating you,

without returning care to plug the wound.

You grew another heart, and gave that, too,

I’m sure as its recipient is doomed

to one day wish he’d sooner gave you his

but find his organ harder to extract.

What need have you for mine? But here it is,

no prettier than yours, but more compact.

The heart that’s in your chest won’t beat for us;

I keep that one in my sarcophagus.