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after Leonard Cohen; for S.
This poem is for no one but you.
It won't come alive, bright in your hands
as flowers. Because it has no scent, it will
never need water or pressing when dead.
I've spilt your glorious flower pots,
the amaryllis and daffodils many times,
and will again, and will again.
I ate you up with my brutal eyes many times
before we slept together, before I slipped
my hand under your shirt to take your pulse
at your nipple (you believed me!)
I ate you up then and I eat you now
with my voracious eyes, slim blue teeth gnashing.
But don't believe a word of this,
you know I'm full of shit. I like to say
I'm a poet! which is a lie; I only play at poems;
my poems! Rather, a band of porn stars
disguised as FBI Angels sulking outside
our door invisible. Invincible. They make me
indivisible from you.
Even if we split, my lips will come
together over and over again to say your name,
though I'm too lazy to make your name into a song
that you'd learn to love, though I know
I'm on the verge of losing you, our love,
warped enough to rap around our bland legs
on long nights in front of the television.
Yes, I ogled your sister—her flower dress
unveiling legs and bosom in dusky sunlight
and then I lusted for your sister's dog
and then the idea of your sister's dog
in a bitch collar bent over a small
refrigerator stocked with German beer.
Yes, I dream of other women,
rooms of them, rooms of naked women
who are cold and eager and I try to save them
but can't, being naked and cold myself
and a bastard of an egg with no heart,
only a cool question mark beating off
in secret minutes under a Serpentine table—
by Joel Giroux
from: Larger than
Still Life, ©2003
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