CURE FOR ALL THAT AILS ME

The mind's tears burn, etch more deeply than the heart's,
salt and acid stinging to the inward quick,
with no release, relief in an outward flow
oozing or flooding, oft tumbling and splashing
from eyes to nose, cheek, and chin--and the face
and hands, yes, the face and hands of another,
who will smother in sob and sigh the mute scream.
(THE HEART'S TEARS ARE A PLEA FOR LOVERS' FINGERS.)
The mind's griefs burrow and gnaw, mutant maggots
berserk, ripping away at living tissue,
enraged by death's dearth: they need the mind's dying.




Thinking of the war bleeds the bile in which they breed:
their toxic scums ooze into fold and adyt,
poisoned brain rages against its own skull,
with no tears for a lover to kiss away.
(Can only murder or madness caress me
tightly enough to stifle my mind's scream?)


So, I am telling her that terrorism
is not the enemy, merely the weapon
of those who cannot afford a billion bucks
for a month's bombs. SUDDENLY, she wants silence.
Her fingers, nicotine-stained parentheses,
censor my lips; the whiskey in her whisper
hits me harder than a pint in my gut would;
with crank-cracked voice she shouts, "Who gives a damn shit?"
.....After a while she giggles when I say, "Not me!"


I am too much a slave of my own demons
to give a damn about feminine freedom:
THAT WOMAN IS WISE WHO MAKES ME STOP THINKING.