--THERE MUST BE FIFTY WAYS TO LEAVE YOUR LOVER

 

…A long time ago, I wrote this poem.  It has never been published and has been rejected half a dozen times. 

I don’t know why I wrote it or why I was so angry when I did, but I fell into this place and it came out.
It remains one of my favorites.
Here it is:
 

               This Is Not a Love Poem

You are in Switzerland noshing patchwork cheese,

buying wristwatches with Andre or Gary.
The sun is gentle and restrained on your faces.
A breeze kicks up enough that your hair flounces around your cheek
while seeding the air
with the honeysuckle notes of your perfume,
and at this moment
on our very planet
there could not be a more lovely creature
than you.

Over here

there’s no yellow brick road
so  I’m heading off to where
the trails are paved with razors pointed topside,
sticking up jaggedly,
a billion blades
of glinting metal teeth.
To get where I need to go
requires more than faith and
means taking a blood bath.

You should be so thrilled.

Perhaps you can toss confetti across your gazpacho
or shoot up the next guy to slip you the finger.

Mind you, this is not a love poem.

Mind yourself
and mine those men with their ceramic smiles
and candy cane eyes,
their Dudley Do-Right jaws as reliable as oxbows.
Take them in the crux of your kiss,
your armpit
or crotch
for all I care.
Crush them like scrawny spiders or
choke them with a designer garrote,
but leave me out of it,
I’m busy.

When I brushed my teeth this morning

they bled inky black, liquid licorice.
I tried gargling with salt water but that did nothing to stem the flow,
the blow as it were,
so the doctor has fitted me with this muzzle thing
and now the only way I’m able to convey how much I hate you
is to type it
like I’m doing right now.