Love Poem

Here, put on this stone coat.

Walk with me.

Even if you were warm before, it will leave you shivering

And it is heavy

With plenty of pockets stuffed with regret, deception and train tickets.

Here, wrap it tight.

The seams are made of a sleety wind--

Let it whip your bones

And that paltry cup of brown leaves you call a heart.

Let's hold hands, like links in a good stout chain.

There is a starving bear on the other end,

Sick of tricks

And drooling over us twin dolls, presented like meat cookies

On a flat blind tray.

Or should we try to stay alive in naked embrace?

Clear the snow away and kiss me.

Rub ice on my blacking toes,

Shout to me through the pack ice,

I will toss flowers to you from my airless tomb beneath the floe.

I confess that I long for the warm hour in summer,

When I had coffee and my

Little ridiculous pennant

To mark the top of the world.

But it's no good, nothing will burn out here,

Not even your old love letters,

Which I should have eaten when I could--

Though they make fine cudgels now.

So come freeze with me.

Finger your old lovers' skulls like a rosary

And stuff candy promises into the open fractures;

Oh Love, it's wonderful,

We're together and I feel less and less,

They say in the end the letting go is easy--

We'll be like babies

Falling asleep under our mobile of silly debris

Airborne in the sharp stark indifference of our solitary deaths in the storm.

__________
linked for Poetry Jam, Nov. 2011 "Paradise Lost"