Romance

I love the bus driver.
He moves me like an unsought fortuneteller,
Safe hands eclipsing a black moon, two and ten.
His doors fold, so I step in and sit, feeling menial.
Then I look into his rear view mirror, and I know love.
He is my reflection, my active photograph.

I love the electrician.
I climb into his cherry picker and talk to the sky,
To squirrels and gymnastics, birds and aerial maneuvers.
He bounds the power line like it's a ledge and swears,
-On my mama's grave! God bless her soul!
That we'll never fry, we'll never touch the ground.

I love the bug guy.
How he checks my sheets for cockroaches before bed.  

How he fogs the house like a godless apparition; 

gushing in my chest.  I love his bag of shaking
Poisons, how they leave insect stomachs flattened
On the kitchen counter, their legs dangling dead.

I love the old man.
He embraces me every first time the alzheimers-
fever drips, just like lust, like the melting fire of
his advent candle, or like the pea soup
slipping from his toes…

The Rape of Cactus

Give me a porcupine,
a blow fish,

a jelly bean

and a baptized rabbit for the operating table.

Have Genghis Khan removed from the surgery   
rotation, so I can butcher skins; peel them back
and unite them as sentimental crawling cloth. 

  

Stop inserting crazy straws as heart valve stents,

Stop assuming the vibration of jackhammers are orgasms,

Stop marking faded scars in the birthday calendar,

Stop resting your head against hollow pillows.

Stop thinking I read your poetry

                  and hold tightly the greenly stitched coat I've mended…for you. 
                   
So twist your shadow of its confidence and mop water
and rig the full to capacity, flat tire U-haul
to your tendons.  
                         Now listen to the hymn of dragging hubcaps
                         cut tracks into solid ground.

WARNING:

Learn from

the cactus's haircut,

the blunted shears

and pile of prickles…





So you can stop believing







that I'd let you love me.