My love is too much for you –
it makes you uncomfortable –
blood, poetry, a baby,
red needs that phone
from foreign lands,
black needs that splash
on the pages
of your white paper heart.
You’d have preferred a girl
with ordinary needs:
lunch, sex, affection,
someone who doesn’t demand,
dinner, wine, bed,
now and then a blowjob,
and needs that are never
red like open wounds
but cold and gray
like television screens
in houses lined up in rows.
Oh my love,
even those ordinary girls
with ordinary needs
read my books.
They say they feel
just like me.
They say I transcribe
the language of their hearts.
They say I translate
their silent, untold pain
into the white light of language.
Oh my love,
there is no love
that isn’t demanding.
It may pretend to be easy
until the first pain comes,
until the first baby arrives,
screaming its helpless need
into a universe
that never invited it.
The love you’re looking for
can only be found
on the white pages
of recipe books.
You’re looking for a meal,
not love,
a meal followed by sex,
pale sex
that speaks only to the cock,
and not to the moaning chaos
of the heart.
