The Business of Love is Cruelty

It scares me the genius we have

for hurting one another. I'm seven,

as tall as my mother kneeling and

she's kneeling and somehow I know

exactly how to do it, calmly,

enunciating like a good actor projecting

to the last row, shocking the ones

who've come in late, cowering

out of their coats, sleet still sparkling

on their collars, the voice nearly licking

their ears above the swordplay and laments:

I hate you.

Now her hands are rising to her face.

Now the fear done flashing through me,

I wish I could undo it, take it back,

but it's a question of perfection,

carrying it through, climbing the steps

to my room, chosen banishment, where

I'll paint the hair of my model

Bride of Frankenstein purple and pink,

heap of rancor, vivacious hair

that will not die. She's rejected

of course her intended, cathected

the desires of six or seven bodies

onto the wimp Doctor. And Herr Doktor,

what does he want among the burning villages

of his proven theories? Well, he wants

to be a student again, free, drunk,

making the cricket jump, but

his distraught monster's on the rampage

again, lead-footed, weary, a corrosive

and incommunicable need sputtering

his chest, throwing oil like a fouled-up

motor: how many times do you have to die

before you're really dead?