Don’t Think About It Too Closely

Don’t Think About It Too Closely

I can’t think

that you ever felt love

when you tell me

all women cut after leaving.

Never look back,

some scratching words like that.

I mirror your smile

but backwards,

trust in you to scissor

our photos in two,

seen it in cheap afternoon films

on those cheap afternoon channels,

where a jilted serial kidnapper,

always someone recently close,

holes himself in a rotting windmill

of her pinboard ticker tape mind.

Never short of hostages on TV,

zoom into charcoal cookie-cutter

mascara streaks then fade to white.

She’s so self published,

bottled her vanity potions

of half wept tears,

for the coma’s so deep dug

in this next partner

that he'd sleep to miss the wake.

Rip out his one pound of flesh,

slash it up fifty percent,

to sell minced heart bits.

Mix oatmeal and stir in end-trails;

straight, forward-facing paths,

no bends, no kinks, no surprises,

no divergence in a yellow wood:

watch her tear with careless scorn

along the dotted line and torn.

I can’t think

that you ever knew love

when you can’t tell me

of those left in your backwash,

nor show any line of diary

that you’d never write,

blank cards decay at birthdays

unbought, left on shelves

to mustard yellow.

Never even unscrew a pen

to mark any cross on any map

where my end becomes

your start again.