“I’m going to leave you,” you said.
I heard you, I said.
Again she said, “I’m going to leave you.”
I heard you, I said again.

The ultimate persuasion,
the ultimate trump.

Soft, you were.
Your body was always soft,
soft . . . soft . . .

Your eyes
I tasted your lashes
I tasted tears with my tongue,
salt tears . . . soft tears . . .
black mascara in the black dark,
collision of butterflies-
in the dark the memory of colors.
(“I’m going to leave you,”
always somewhere in the air,
the ear,
caught somewhere between
sound and hearing.

Your neck was soft,
I tickled it, tasting it,
you laughed, I loved.
We laughed, I loved.
(“I’m leaving you.”)
I love your everything.
Your breasts are on that menu,
(“I’m going to leave you.”)
You touch me as I touch you.
I am your plug,
you are my receptacle
Together we are current.

Here we are again:
phase three is phase one
repeated twice,
heard thrice.
I do not feel as much,
though all my senses are in touch.
I am licking your senses.
I touch your sense of navigation:
who are you?
wife, lover, friend , butcher, sausage . . .
I love your flesh, your meat, your skin,
your out, your in
more than I love your mind
Your body loves, your mind does not.
I know from your lovely body
reciprocity
that your mind cannot pronounce or spell.
Your mind wears too many clothes
for this or any season;
it’s not that cold.
Hell can not freeze over.

The peacock, schizophrenia,
disease is in the attic
stored with all the other heirlooms
and artifacts of your mind’s
abandonment, relics that you will either
play or part with with finality.

Your body is well and living,
your mind is not forgiving
of what it can’t remember
well enough to form an accusation.
Who are you?
That is the game I play,
a grim game with grim rules
so in truth why call it play?
Games: win-win, win-lose, lose-lose,
we like to think we choose,
but . . .
I tried to see how you saw it,
what it seemed to you to be.

I am wet sand and you have lain on me.
You linger when the tide’s gone out,
but you have gone away

I’m going to leave you, she said.
I heard you, I said
as the tide rushed in.

1/72, L34