Lips and Eyes
I wish I could write love-poems.
Some people write only love-poems.
Instead I philosophize.
I think the appeal of love-poems,
love aside, is to show you’ve arrived.
That you’re not merely feeling, yearning, wanking,
but *doing. Some poets, guys even,
keep it up long into marriage –
they escape crib and kitchen
to write poems about their wives.
Well I love my wife but keep quiet
so as not to tempt the Demiurge,
who loves to deprive us of happiness
and can’t be philosophized.
If I wrote, however, of old girl-friends,
my wife would look at me cross-eyed –
unless, perhaps, I omitted
all trace of the erotic.
Described the ones who left me
for lack of financial, genetic,
or entertainment potential.
Or the ones I left, hysterical
because I hate to hurt women,
and thereby hurt them more.
It’s always possible to learn
something new, however cold
and shriveled, in the cracks
of what you learned earlier.
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