the cynic's love song

I will not write love poems because
stars and laced fingers and deep
kisses make me sick. Because dawn
doesn’t blossom and the night
always ends. The pillow loses its scent and feathers.
I lose myself in closets, waltzing with skeletons.

The sky fades from violet silk
to rough gray wool filling my throat
until I choke. I will not write love
poems because my soul aches for release,
but there is none. The grass
browns, the trees turn to skinny sentinels, watching
through sleepeyes. Life becomes routine
until I don’t notice where my feet take me.

“I love you”’s fall on ears full of cotton balls
and the echo never comes back. I will not write
love poems because love is a baby
growing in the womb of the world:
this time we cannot bear
the weight of it so we walk to the clinic
wearing black sweaters and shame
in the set of our lips. I search for anything
to make me dizzy and forgetful.

I search for anything to touch and never
get farther than my breasts and stomach.

I will not write love poems

because I released those words
from my heart like ugly wrens, flying over
the people in the streets screaming about
war! murder! poverty! atrocities!
until I cannot remember a time before.

Until I realize there was no time before.
There is no time left. I will not write

love poems because the paint wells dried up
and the picture was never finished,
just splotches of green and gray across the canvas.

Letters go unsent and I become a dusty guitar,
my strings broken and no one to finger me into song.
I don’t throw the garbage away and it becomes
my family. Dirty dishes pile up, clinking
elegies in the sink.
I will not write love poems.

I
     will
        not
           write love poems

because there is
nothing
left
to write.