Teaching a Toddler(A woman-child?) the Manners(Manipulations?) of Love(Jealousy?)

please dont drink with her please dont think with her
something can happen some things i can do better i think
that i think better i think those things can happen
between you and between us things happen different than
the differences between you and that child, that girl
if you please please me first please

excuse me do not forget me excuse me no neglecting me
recuse yourself from all social niceties if you will
that require your nice manners, that refuse your nice & neat neglect of an ex
lover love her? lover it's unexcuseable
excuses are to me the lover's niceties of neglect

i beg your pardon darling please pardon my vanity
the tenacity of my unpardonable envy is begging
for the salve of you pardoning yourself from seeing an old darling
who is going to beg for the pardon, my king, of that wound
(on your chest) i pardoned myself from life to be a salve for
part based on you darling, part based on your pardon of my audacity

oh i thank you oh how i will for all things thank you
the blank hues of days you thank her for filling i will shade in
in shady willow tree caves i will thank you for the hue
of pointsettias poisioning your cheeks oh thank god for you

Apotheosis

Through plump porcelain
fingers ringed with gaelic grandmother's silver
and hardy long nails whose DNA are shot through with
cocaine and the dust of cowboys riding off to chase
injuns on TV screens and girls with bigger dreams
like triple D breasts this girl thing looks at me
and says its the touch, its any touch, its like
she's found the Cerberus to cork her nitrogen bottle of lonely
and it's touch and it will keep those shades in sohelphergod

I think desire or quelling it
works as well as dousing blue vibrating electricity
with water then wading in water so blue
as the lakes in north country and screaming
at the flagellation of poison coursing through
the maze of veins when those snakes that can
swim so sperm like up and through waves for days
and bite her right on her heel its like if we love her
we must fling bouquets to the wind and save our baby girl sohelpusgod

Through pulsating cayenne
hair ringed with grandmother's gaelic curls
and fetus sized wrists whose boniness grinds like
powder under an apothecary's beat and the dust that coats
your patriline because great great granddaddy drank mint juleps
with his feet propped on sooty scorched skin and courage
propped on his mother's womb this girl thing looks at me
and says its the touch, its any touch, its like
she's found the mouth that will blow the rank stench of a tomb away sohelphergod

I think this cartilage idiocy
catches as well as a poacher's trap catches
like the hammer of domesticity catches a most lovely
loving woman in the act of lipstick on the collar on the boxers catches
in the pores of grayish bloated mushrooms dank musty rainwater catches
on the snags in girls' cotton rigidity something like
when daddy brushed our hair he never knew how
but we laugh while our scalp sears and its like because he loves us
we must kiss rapiering stubble which grates us raw as pork sohelpusgod

Although viscous turquoise
eyes like yours stroked with the wrinkles of aged papyrus
and a form erect as Priapus whose vellum danced with
coarse musky hair waving like reeds headiness that
punches pow right in the think of all i have left
and demolishes me boy man god thing looks at me
and i don't need the touch, its not the touch, it's like
a harvest abundance when he pushes thermal oxygen out of his mouth pufff
when we are loving and from that I know weather ohthankyoulover.

the cop car roars by and ordains himself a liar
strands of my black hair fall fast and i call myself
the ugliest
i would claw at my face's windowframe like so many
wheels clutch at potholes but
my fidgeting hands are full with two bruised
persimmons, forlorn from their fall off
the tree
i bought them when i couldnt buy my reasons
for roaring up the interstate, pushing on
the clutch as desperate as my thighs push on your
ruddy ruby red ears
i stopped when i sold out my standing at the university
and bought these persimmons, sandpaper felt wet dreams on
the tongue
and crouched in the shadow of a meadow behind
the fruit stand
in fresno. imagine my surprise when orange silky skin
scuttles away from prying fingernails, opening like
rotting wet floorboards. i like it, this pulpy glove
sliding down my arm
the weathered brown face languishing beneath his straw hat and
the fruit flies didn't seem to mind when i
whisked my hand over the stand for a couple more
he didn't wake up, anyway i would have gotten them any way
i could to fill that wicker basket you picked out because
thank you for
the hows of
no the ways which

no you just remove the pit lodged between the buds of my breast
when you kiss there like so, like feathers, like a quill
puncturing the roaring rot of a seed
you pull me out so delicate

"the trees have their loves through they're different from mine"

a pretending like that would work
like taking the gremlin doubts that lurk
in my mind and snorting them down into my mouth
chewing them up and squishing them out
through the gaps in my teeth like tender
titian yams, all dull pumpkin spice.

a pretending like that would serve
like the way i dished up the curve
of my shrunken breasts in a boned corset
deluded, that, these were the roundest your tongue had met
truly though its a presentation hiding my womanhood
a sagging secret like a bar of soap in a stocking

a pretending like that would pervert
like sloshing around in mud and dirt
uncapping a jar, trying to capture the breath
of crimson tuberroses, light powdery and bereft
of weight. i hate that the thorny can smell this
waltz on the wind too, so i pull out the roots.

a pretending like that would incinerate
the feathered masquerade mask i would bait
a fire with, that big venetian spectacle you wanted
to wear on the town, so daunted
by showing us perfumed ladies your cherub face.
i would take it away to take away what would hide you.

a pretending like that would water down
a piece of your peace of mind, contrast like the sound
of uncapping your maker's mark, wanting to make a mark
on the tension of boyhood and tasting that dark
amber, which is just diluted now, because i like
your hands how they are. sober, crystal, unshaking.

or it could be (please please be) that pretending
she never sewed the frayed woolen lining
of your cold country solitude, that she
never came before me, it could be
as harmless as furtively clipping your nails.
maybe you couldn't play that guitar anymore but

you look so secured for me when you play bach.