See how I love you darling
skittering down the rotten leaf path with a lamp
wearing my delicate gloves and old cardigan
against the chill and damp?
Don't hand me shit about loving sailors now
with their faces like pale wrinkled moons
floating up to sing you shanteys
while you percolate in shallows like a wax Quadroon.
My frail sweetheart, what's become of you?
You used to gild heaven just by looking up.
Now, if we touch, it's with a cypress branch
to roll love's body in the muck.
We really cared once, you know it's true
with every movement meant to please.
Now your sailors adore you with gassy grins
and stultifying ease.
I'll use tiny clippers on a driftwood cello
a balsa fake to echo and bore
a waterside horror to mock two biddies
our love song evermore.
______
for Dverse Poetics "After Saint Valentine left the building."