Disasters Elsewhere

What is more dull than other people's lovers?

And what is less compelling

Than disasters elsewhere

And the people who wring their hands over them?



What matters is

My coffee isn't right

And you have not kissed me

In more than ten hours.



I am a dry leaf.

Shall I shade you?

I need all the world's rain for myself--

Get out of here,

And take with you all the places I never go.



Once,

I was a messenger of divine kindness.

I taped together wounded butterflies,

And even watched your damn kids.

Now,

I have someone else do my dancing, though badly,

And I steal songs from the throats of yellow birds

To stuff into my stiff black shoes

Lest they lose their shape.



Someone else's lover came knocking at my door

With an earthquake in his hands.

People fell from him.

My steps shivered and cracked.



You know,

This coffee just isn't right

And you have not kissed me

In more than ten years,

But you hang all over that bastard at the door.

Did you get sick of women?

Or was it because my brown autumn eyes

Left you in famine,

So you sought out the flood?

_________

a little portrait of the butch from hell, for One Shot Wednesday