Three Love Poems

I. Fish

Your hands and feet are pinned down

I will split you open with my sterile tools

It won’t hurt at all

You smell like vinegar and formaldehyde

You are perfectly preserved.

I will make my incisions clean and straight

I will not leave jagged edges

I will take out your stomach and then cut it open

To see what is inside

Baby Fish!

It looks like you swallowed them whole

What a hungry boy you are!

They are perfectly preserved

Except for the eyes.

Before the bell rings

I will gently pick up your organs with tweezers

And put them back in place

I am careful to cover you up with plastic

Now that you have been cut open you will surely start to stink.

II. Twenty-five minutes in the South

Close your eyes to twenty-five minutes in the South

It is night

It is hot

There are corn fields on both sides

Your insides are liquid

You are drunk on love

And sick on love’s sickness

You will heave any moment

Pass out in a sweet delirium

And wake up in a crusty hung over mess

No longer South

Did you find what you were looking for?

In your day dream journey?

You went to bed heavy

And woke up light of head and still heavy of body

It rained molasses and moonshine in our spring

And when the rain stopped

The sun backed us into brittle gingerbread children

Now it is summer

My secret drawer is full of snapped gingerbread parts

Arms that couldn’t reach and feet that couldn’t move

And heads that popped off

The heart goes last

Useless in it’s immobility

III. Sleeping Gypsy

My sleeping gypsy has a flask in his hip pocket

He does not rhyme

He does not cry

More Fonze than Buddha

He hated his hands

He could always touch but could never feel

He liked to put back a six pack before he saw his shrink

I watched you doze-sleepy eyes and twinkle toes

I took off your glasses and gently rolled you

I thought – this is what I want

You are full of fermented corn

Conspiracies are your brain porn

You sleeping body is warm and I don’t want to leave

I remember many hung over omelets sitting across from you

My head pounding – the gears cranking, grinding

Your excesses make me rust

I want to drown with you, but I still swim to well to follow you into the blue

My skinny land legs have many tales to tell

Of wading on your shore

Smelling the salt in your air

Smelling the rot that proceeds life that proceeds death that proceeds life.

We can sever each other’s limbs

Because we know we will regenerate

We are prickly and made of brilliant colored spines

We are decorative but not edible

Children don’t even know we’re alive

I let a sleeping gypsy into my bed

But I made sure to leave before he woke

He probably would have stayed

I’ll never know