Tales are Innumerable of Love

Late in life, William S. Burroughs
remarked that
Love is nature's most
powerful pain-killer.
And this from a lifelong junky,
by the way.

*

... that within
the tether of the wedded,
flows an opiate
stronger than heroin;
sweetening the gaze,
numbing the brain.

*

We don't have names for these arrangements,
that arrive like wayward houseguests; unannounced,
that depart like an arrowhead,
straining from your ribcage
at a world it cannot help but injure.

*

Consider ourselves,
the lovers we've shed--
little children hearts carried,
each piece a meal,
in Dad's old cigar boxes;
slivers cold as sushi...

... tripping beside
a pile of rubble, stooping
to spill the contents
into earth, awaiting
some response.

*

Jesus, you're
half her age and
twice as confused.
Here is a woman, hurting
and a man, pleasure-seeking.
The cosmogony of modern romance--
chronicle their trajectory,
like errant planets.

*

The foretaste of disgust, abandonment,
Here in her pursed lips,
her swollen eyes, her dampening
cheeks. Still, you sacrifice
the bones of the departed
to the fires of her thighs.
Soundless, she awaits your
devastation, broken upon
the boulder of your bed.
Arriving eviscerated,
she awaits her grief.

*

Crows perch in her hair,
staring down the fresh kill.
Something tells you to guard her,
jealously. Use her flames
on the sorrows you hold.
Hammer them out,
like sheets of metal.

Batter your
boundless desires,
before more lovers leave them
useless,
screaming in the rain.
Forge your pain into something
completely other.

*