the doctor,
Love.
He appears
as husband, lover
analyst & muse,
as father, son
& maybe even God
& surely death.
All this is true.
The man you turn to
in the dark
is many men.
This is an open secret
women share
& yet agree to hide
as if
they might then
hide it from themselves.
I will not hide.
I write in the nude.
I name names.
I am I.
The doctor’s name is Love.
Similar Posts
Because she wants to touch him,
Because she wants to talk to him,she keeps silent.Because she wants to kiss him,she turns away& kisses a man she does not want to kiss.He watchesthinking she does not want him.He listenshearing her silence.He turns awaythinking her distant& kisses a girl he does not want to kiss.They marry each other –A four-way mistake.He goes to…
Already six years past your age!
the house near Hampstead Heath,& all your fearsthat you might cease to bebefore your pen had glean’d. . . .My dear dead friend,you were the first to teach mehow the dust could sing.I followed in your footstepsup the Heath.I listened hardfor Lethe’s nightingale.& now at 31, I want to live.Oblivion holds no adolescent charms.& all…
If it is impossible to promise
this is becausewe learn so much geographyfrom the shifting of one bodyon another.If it is impossible to promiseabsolute fidelity,this is becausewe learn so much historyfrom the lying of one bodyon another.If it is impossible to promiseabsolute fidelity,this is becausewe learn so much psychologyfrom the dreaming of one bodyof another.Life writes so many letterson the naked…
The lessons we learned here
handkerchiefs& secret cheeks of bubblegum)were graver than anyin the schoolroom:the dangers of a lifefrozen into poses.Trilobites in theirpetrified ghettos,lumbering dinosaurswho’d outsized themselvestold how nature wasan endless morality playin which the cockroach(& all such beadyeyedexemplars of adjustment)might well recite the epilogue.No one was safebut stagnation wasthe surest suicide.To mankind’s Hamlet,what six-legged creature would playFortinbras? It made…
The experience of fear is not an observer of it; he is fear itself, the very instrument of fear.
In dreams I descendinto the cave of my past:a child with a morgue-tagon its toe,the terrible metal squeakingof the morgue-drawers,& the chilly basement& the slam of doors.Or else I am setting up dreamhouse,with the wifeof my second ex-husband.She complains of himwith breaking sorrow-& I comfort her.(She only married him, it seems, for me).Sometimes I wake…
Here, at the end of the world,
as if they were hearts,the hearts ooze a darknesslike india ink,& poets dip their pens in& they write.‘Here, at the end of the world,’they write,not knowing what it means.‘Here, where the sky nurses on black milk,where the smokestack feed the sky,where the trees tremble in terror& people come to resemble them. . . . ‘Here,…