I’d like to think the Bogeyman is dead,

that age has turned me like a noble grape

into a richer wine to match the bread,

so long-matúred, a snoot fit for a crepe,

that I might be the one one true in faith

might pick to bless and drink in Someone’s name,

and, fortified, no monster, creep, or wraith

could fast uncork the years to taste my shame

and let my notes of apple dribble out.

I’ve learned I’m still the toddler told a lie

to make me “good”—no ice cream if I pout—

but bullies won’t be scolded if I cry.

I went to school for decades, as did you,

and learned we grown-ups fear the Boo-gey, too.

The landscape has a sharp and jagged slope,

and I stand on the high ground; I defer

to you to best slip from the noose from rope

you give a man. (I can not envy her.)

But when I saw the gander flock to you,

and her, and her, and peck, and flap, and squawk,

and I balled up a page of verse and threw

it in your lap, and shrugged, and turned to walk…

At times, it’s feel a pang or grow a fang,

a glance rocked aft to turn my heart to salt,

the fearful expectation of a “bang!”

or gorges cleaving at the seismic fault.

The birds, as well, believe in poetry.

I honk, and flail, and raise my neck to thee.

The antidote to shame is, welcome shame.

Heap boulders on your chest—endure the pain—

until, to breathe, you’d sacrifice your name,

but something takes a breath inside your brain,

and pauses at the height, as if to speak,

and says, “There’s nothing for it, now, at all?”

“‘Salvation’ is the death cry of the weak.”

“We are not wrong to cry it—still we fall.”

“And, if it does not matter, live for you.”

“What would you do? These minutes are for you.”

I’d heard what “freedom” meant, but never knew.

“What would you do? These moments are for you.”

I cried; I laughed; at last I found relief

with seven billion gods and one belief.

I will not love you like Neruda’s verse.

I can’t; I always watched a goddess go.

Her ghost will be the last to quit my hearse.

My love is like an empty coffin, though,

cremated in Her stead, kept in an urn

I buried prematurely, in my haste

to have another vanity to burn.

My love is countless eulogies in waste,

a bitter sip to cure what feels like health.

Although, to Her, whom frankness might disarm,

perhaps my love could be a tarnished wealth

of copper liberties and silver charms.

My love is not a furnace or a rod;

my love’s the honesty most save for God.

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.