If I have loved, I suppose
it is because I am supposed 
to love. I don’t know 
any other way to say it. Go ahead,
scream at me. I don’t know 
what I’m doing. For instance: the garden’s failing. 
Last night I sliced through a tomato’s
black, grub-run heart and almost 
ate it anyway. It’s too much. I mean by that
everything: fireflies humping brightly 
in the unmown lawn, another
of cat’s dead birds at the front door,
the aluminum plant down the street—weedy breath 
and busted windows. How they’re packing guns again 
in Arizona. Or the way some kid emailed the whole class 
his suicide note. What I mean is, why 
do we even do this? I don’t know 
but dance anyway around your ridiculous 
blue room, as you throw your too-heavy head again 
away from me, little lip-slit a wound, 
tear letting slip the heart’s scream,
why did you do this?

(later)

Urge and wrestle of neuron, synaptic sizzle
and fizz, red-faced dream of—of what? Empty breast? 
Birth’s bone vise? Or before? Say that watery dawn, 
in which some screaming cell split, tore itself in trembling two
and two and two? I have rent myself as well.
Here in the half-dark, I am done
and undone: the very space between your breaths
shivers, shatters me. Vast as god 
and sadder, I fall to my knees, praise 
whatever terror this is that takes and twists
your fisted, moon-slick face. Go ahead, 
scream. Scream and breathe, and I will know 
you are alive, as I am.

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