QUITTING

at first 
modeling nude
felt amazing
like the show
of skin
that would have
been Ruben’s masterpiece
had their lifetimes
been in sync

but gradually
the dreams abated
and the reality
of maintaining a pose
for a group
of ogling amateurs
not only took
the shine off the veneer
but rubbed away
half the surface

not even the money
was enough to compensate
for being rendered
like some cheap harlot
or mishmash of parts
that could have
been anyone’s

eventually
she quit the job
kept her clothes on
her body
no longer a spectacle
but her own

invisible to almost all
for dissection by no one


 

END OF A RELATIONSHIP

a childish smirk holds up your face,
and a viper in the grass will hiss all along
its invisible backbone -what did you expect?

no wish to begin a world that's old,
hold it together with unfashionable glue,
when the cartilage is frail
and the lamb's been slaughtered for the umpteenth time -

beneath my cheeks, rise swollen glands of first love,
on my neck, the tracks your paws have made,
blood the reliever scars my back,
my spine is heart-carved like an old tree's trunk -

you're right - there's nothing worth supporting,
let's return to our homes, cry indifferent tears,
waves of the stuff to prove we've not been wasted on each other
otherwise, we're just beasts –

the buds will burst with sap again,
the oil can't help but fill the lamps,
all creatures must, while there's still life,
not play at being dead -

and, at my age, who wants to be a toothless tiger,
or remember a time of beauty as a year of anguish -
let me believe I'm on some kind of threshold –
is it too much to ask that you push me over now?