from SOUVENIR

i’m sick of love & sad for what I’ve lost:
that bullshit fix of nervy hands has gone &
rude spring’s a bully, sun & wavy cold air
& you are well, i having never been well i,
i want to meet you anew and be loved &
not thought of as silly – to you now i’m
a clown or a dog waiting to be put down
& so my breasts are hairy teats for cubs i love
& are not born, & not for you, my new nude
is atrocious & i wonder who you
think of in the shower, what wets your meat
if not my putrid body you once & gently
fucked & which i, promising it to you, have lost
the receipt for. go away for a long time


& meet me at the airport, run me a bath
as before with water from the kettle so
kind & we’ll shiver in two inches forever,
thigh on thigh never shrinking from the
moment but cycling it around the time
we do have, having been given each other, &
never unadorned or waiting to get broke.
i’d wait to die forever to have unlost
that time & die to lose it all again,
having taken too much, having got
love unspent not wanted & staid unhappy
inside the kettle waiting to be filled kindly,
touched on the cunt or met at the airport with the
ghosts of animal kingdoms still inside me.