My Love Is Too Much for You
My love is too much for you —
it makes you uneasy —
blood, poetry, a child.
Red needs that phone
from foreign countries,
black needs that sprinkling
across the pages
of your white, paper heart.
You’d rather be with some girl
who has ordinary needs:
lunch, sex, affection,
who isn’t demanding,
dinner, wine, bed,
now and then some oral pleasure,
and needs that are never
red like open wounds,
but cold and dull
like television screens
in lined-up houses.
Oh my love,
even those ordinary girls
with ordinary needs
read my books.
They say they feel
the same as I do.
They say that the language of their hearts
is transcribed by me.
They say that their silent, untold pain
is translated by me
into the white light of language.
Oh my love,
there is no love
that isn’t demanding.
It can pretend to be fresh
until the first pain comes,
until the first child arrives,
screaming its infant need
toward a universe
that never invited it.
The love you’re looking for
can only be found
in the white pages
of cookbooks.
You’re looking for cooking,
not love,
a meal followed by sex,
pale sex
that speaks only to the cock,
and not to the moaning chaos
of the heart.
