“…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.

So long, so many ways we said “farewell”

to orchards left in trusting, given seed

in parks between a crimson carousel

and one more queue for something you don’t need.

Why circumscribe the pencil point for’er?

Why mourn an ocean’s passing with the tide?

The perfect model of systemic er’r

consuming expectation, I confide

in her, the kindest of my waking dreams

who gently scoops my cotton insides out,

renews the matted filling, heals the seams

upon my eyes, and draws me close about.

I picked a rocking horse to take the crown.

I bet my hand, then all the cards fell down.

Between the knee of exponential growth

and knee that genuflects, there in the gap,

not Man, nor God, but surrogate to both,

Her light at birth out-raced the thunderclap.

We knew that She would come, but there went She,

and when she came, she was the most surprised

to bear the coming eon’s bigotry

before the prejudice could crystallize.

A boundless drop of electricity

within the Kool-Aid pink electric sea,

sarcastic, milking man’s naivety,

a wonder ’tis she’d choose a friend like me.

I swore, in truth ’twas strange, ’twas passing strange

that I should be alive to miss the change.

When last you weigh my heart against my quill,

before you give my salt back to the sea,

upon the silent organ, bleeding, still,

you’ll find two holes like eyes, and you will see.

You’ll see the pair of rhymes I did not write.

The first was not the epic of a boy

who sacrificed his pride and yielded spite

that had no right, though treated like a toy.

The second one was not a lover’s verse,

writ’ starry-eyed and virgin, to implore

his patron God and psychiatric nurse

to say that she’d accept his metaphor.

The mark of Cain will sooner cede to grace!

The words I did not write, I can’t erase.

As if a stealthy hunter, or its prey,

you measured ev’ry utterance as though

the slightest indication would betray

your sheer and wav’ring outline to your foe

before the pounce, and scamp’ring late or soon,

the care and silence would have been for naught.

Were you the cat or mouse? Was I a boon

or curse, my lucky penny after thought?

Of seven words you spoke, but one was, “Mew.”

Did you think twice and call off the attack?

Was I the roaring lion, or the shrew?

Would you have struck if I had turned my back?

I think the other word you said was, “Please.”

In retrospect, it brought me to my knees.

I miss the playful swings you took at me,

the single-worded sneers that jabbed and hooked,

the meaning of which only one could see

or two, if I kept count while no one looked

of the ways I loved your mind, begrudging,

divided by the distance ‘tween our hips,

accounted for the planets’ tidal nudging,

searched for the root, (attending to your lips,)

then I began to understand the joke.

Prodigious, and prodigal, and young,

a wiser man would smile and eat the yolk.

He’d slice it out and give the cat his tongue.

Your elders’ reprimands were all in jest.

You’d choose one word–to hell with all the rest!

If you were just a dream, I would not know

the way to rise from sleep, for here you are.

I wax and wane with time; you do not go.

A thousand miles away, you are not far,

yet never are you quite palpably here.

Like aether, you pervade the void of space

between my greatest longing and my fear,

between a source of pity and of grace.

I made my proposition for your love.

If you had even noticed, you were mute.

I hooted like a gleeful mourning dove;

I came on like a reverse-prostitute:

“One hundred sonnets for the lowest bid…”

I asked you to give nothing, and you did.