Youth

 

I had what you have once.

I learned too late that

the only ones worth their salt

are the ones that overcome you.

 

Time is a boy full of life.

Time is a beautiful boy.

Time is a hairy leg hung

over a ledge who’s toes

barely touch the river.

 

Because I needed you

I courted you, not meaning

to exploit our relationship,

knowing my love

would never die.

Having loved and lost,

I came to want out of you.

 

You who would have

no compunction but to

drag me by the hair

for all my days,

or were they yours?

Rubbing my nose in

every foolish failure.

 

To thwart you was to turn

a prince into a slave,

to pass the hours

putting things right,

treating a throne

like a toilet

all the while believing

you would return

whatever was taken

from me.

 

Yes, you were a dream

earned only by sleep.

Why couldn’t I see

that surrendering everything

would only bring you closer,

that giving myself away

opened the one door

out of you?

 

Time is a majestic fur coat

held tightly round the throat.

I decorate myself with

the death of all innocence.

But I am better than death.

I will outwit you.

I will do with you

knowing what you did to me;

taking everything I loved

and making me watch

as you choked the life

out of me gently, slowly,

and with such great passion,

I slowly lost consciousness.

 

You made me watch

as everything fell away,

a golden wheat field

mutating into scorched earth

no wind could bother

to caress.

 

My hands, which once

ran circles around the sun

have had to learn to sign,

palms pressed in prayer

because even the angels

are now deaf and unable

to hear music.

The heart, too broken

for its own good

will love anything it can

as it struggles

to deserve you.

 

Now I keep my body

under glass;

a hocked wristwatch

I wish I could buy back.

I suck the wind

back into my lungs

as if it were

my own breath.

I remember I once

tasted your spit

simply because 

you had spat it

and because I loved you

more than myself.

 

God save me

from game shows

in the afternoon.

God save me

from doing

crossword puzzles,

but keep me

enamored of mysteries.

Where is the salt

in being assaulted

by air waves?

I am taking responsibility

for my reverberation.

I am taking myself back.

I will not let you use me

because I will use you first.

Yes, you might

have the last laugh.

But I will have

the last cry

and my crying will

wake the angels

and bring them

to my side.

 

I will find a beauty

that seduces insects,

that does not discriminate

between blossoms and shit.

I will rot slowly, slowly

becoming a fermentation

that becomes a fertilizer

that becomes a flower bed

that births a magenta zinnia.

 

I will have what you had once,

but this time

it will be forever.

 

12/02/22