The Fine Line of Beautiful Living

Walk out past the stacks, rows, aisles

of books, where memoirs of battles slowly gave way

to case histories of molestation and abuse.

—Larry Levis

 

 

 

Your grandest gestures remain

unnoticed.  You have

a hand which can part oceans,

but cannot save you from the desires

 

of men. Girl, you are to be useful

in moist ways.  They care nothing for

the goings on in that mind of yours.

Don’t even try to talk.  Unless

 

to advertise for sex or violence.

There is no God.  You are all

that you have, & that body may be able

to find you some bread to break.  You can

 

always obtain wine to drink.  You have

the right frame for that.  They like you

intoxicated.  Under their weight,

you imagine Kafka, become the Hunger

 

Artist.  Hungry to find any meaning

to the needless sufferings you are

so gifted to witness.  No man cares about

the story of a girl deflowered at an age too young

 

 

 

~

to acknowledge.  No one wants to know

such things, but there you are:

seedless & hollow.  There are

things people do not know they have

 

until those things are gone.  You

did not know you’d be the poetry

of a boiler room romance with a man too old

to be your father, & you too young

 

to know what you possessed.  Too young

to do anything but bear witness to your own ruin.

 

 

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