F. "MARCH"

I realized I had given up the brotherhood hand-clasp
sometime between this love-sorrow, & the last.

You have such an exquisite sense of humor...
how is it even now you don't find me ridiculous?

I know you didn't ask me to come bleed on your carpets.
Like, that bullet was just a ricochet.

What kind of discipline will it take not to give her anything?
If I had tried this at first, how much different we would've been.

You the air of the fields & open sky,
I the air of a stagnant shuttered room.

Sometimes I just have to say, "look what you're giving up!"
--& it's then I know most that I am terribly in error.

What use are my opinions? No one wants to know them,
& if they did, it would only be to kill me.

You are so kind, you know I'll do anything
you say; & you only ask to be left alone.

The part of me that's dying's the only part wanted to live...
or so I pretend. How much more must I learn of Love!

Great & inscrutable Goddess, grant me that creaturely wisdom
who, when faced with death in a trap, gnaws off its foot & escapes.

Joy left a sheen on the sidewalk,
but not a drop on me.

For the first time I contemplate deliberate avoidance.
This is not cruelty but sheer derangement.

All the distractions she counselled me are flat & tasteless
--not her, but them, I think of giving up.

Everyone is "looking for love" it seems--but you,
who alone has been promised a better if you'd spurn this.

--Patchouli, patchouli, patchouli,
the world is in you--& I'm blind.

I can stand a lot more,
bring on the boiling lead.

What makes me want to live, has made me want to die
enough that now, despair seems hardly harsher than my joy.

If you won't be my sun--
shine, still, in my night.