Dear Lover,
The French don’t
know jack shit about love.
I never learned in AP French
that you were the sweetest liar,
with foul truths like chemical equations
where poisonous gases could combine
with platinum to create cocktails
my body would crave, your equation of drug,
euthanizing love’s rabid dog,
Lucky.
Spare me the mercy of
your value-brand honesty.
Dear Lover,
The gypsies knew my fortunes,
or better yet, my misfortunes.
For you always come for me
creeping around the ballet barre
or under the brass piano pedal
in the busy studio, as usual,
suckling on my well-stocked rack
when none of the children are looking,
beneath the confusion of closing night,
when I’m hot and sweaty and sexy
or, at least, those are the lies you always tell me
when I don’t know if
I’ve been stupidly obsessed with you
for one thousand and one nights
or one thousand and two.
Oh dear
Lover,
I don’t know why
I love you with sightless eyes
when clearly, you are visually unappealing.
Please, turn off the lights,
draw the curtains tight across the blackened moon,
don’t forget to leave your giant shoes outside the door.
and I’ll leave my vision at the welcome mat
as I stumble to my deflowering date,
so blind Cyclops’ lust can bed you.
Dear Lover,
You love me and love me not.
Your love is an ever changing arm of clock,
joining hands with mine,
only to leave me again.
Dear Lover,
Stop lying with the coke cocaine,
the Vodka and Gin, the wet whiskey grin.
Be honest (and sober)
(…and monogamous)
for once in this life
or every fingerprint you leave hereafter
will be a stain left in Type A blood.
Dear Lover,
The 7th day of Black History Month,
in some year I refuse to recall,
I remember
our smiles fell from face to floor,
my ducts were overstimulated.
I could not maintain dry eyes.
Your hand reached out to comfort me.
“Don’t touch me, you fucker.”
Dear Lover,
Those French fools never taught me anything useful.
You were the sweetest liar,
your foul truths euthanized my rabid affection.
Yet you always came for me
during the confusion of midnight
when I didn’t know if I’d been stupidly obsessed with you
for one thousand and one days or one thousand and two
and you took advantage of a young, stupid girl
who gave it up every time,
lovingly stupid, foolishly blind
and loved your face in all the right angles.
Scribbling love doodles ‘cause I refused
to read the protractor’s proclamation,
“Hideousness in 360 degrees.”