“We’re so happy.”

“Only in the picture though.”

Happiness flees
Like water moving underneath the trees
You can’t step in the same river twice
(Maupassant's Pierre et Jean taught me that)
So I just don’t step in at all.

But I do other things
With my feet and
hands.
Other people.
I slide my hand up her
Skirt.
I slide my foot up her
Slacks
She stands up after she
figures it out.
That I’m a miserable ****
Who just wants off
And only sees doubt.

A ghostly harvest is upon us.
Taxes and national debt
draw seeping green from my pores
and Wall Street thoughts from my ears.
Everyone everywhere
is sick.
No one can get a word in and
Money talks.

The water rippled with
miniature tidal waves as she stepped in
Clothing absent
Skin, mind, feeling,
All bare before me
She sunk in.

I shrunk to the floor
Next to the tub
She seemed to float in her
oatmeal bath
I reached for the book
The one I bought her from
a hole in the wall store
in my hometown.

My eyes drift to the tips of her hair
Dipped into the water, almost baptismal
Most people have hair growing from
their head.
Lauren's is embroidered

I open the cover
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

From my lips,
where love once halted
and sighed in defeat,
a voice leaves reserved only for her

We clutch hands
I, almost immediately,
completely instinctively,
squeeze tight,
afraid she might drown
were I to let go.

But she doesn't need saving
Neither do I.
Because of that
There is love.
Reading to her in the bath
Is love
Holding her hand is love
Dining on her past
Is love.

She who tastes of divinity
gazes upon me with eyes
of earth.
There was no moment holier
than when we were
intertwined.
And I, laced with desire
make love to her with a
crazed passion.

The only one I'll worship.

Her face as clear as
moonlight on midnight water
I dive into her, temperature
neither cool nor warm.
Only love.
Only ecstasy embracing
every nerve
Only eyes speaking
every word.

The only one I'll worship

She gnaws on my bones,
porous yet impenetrable
She aches to get in and
I could never say no.
So now she flows within my blood
Within my body
Bringing from this coffin life
Holy life
Love I could never describe.

The only one I'll worship.

With shades of gray our lives
Intertwine
We collide always
My ways were changed but it doesn’t come so nicely
Relax, Relapse, Relax
It’s back to the floor I go
I can hear reverberations and feel the
Syncopation of our hearts as one
A single touch and my tension comes undone
With eyes to calm storms and a smile to awaken waves
We wait and watch and feel and want
And need and heed this warning;
I might love you too much

Don’t go, don’t go
Don’t open a black void
Greater than the sea
The abyss to swallow virtue
To waste my love
Streets dead and hollow
I’m left wondering where you are
There will be no climbing up
No light. No soft, human touch.
Cancer of the soul
Devouring, if you go
"Devour me, if she goes."
Left dead like the moon
Left cold like the snow
Both things beautiful
Both sad on the surface below
If you go.

Bring one through the mercenary’s lines
Trouble started long ago
Fighting and fighting and fighting
Uniting is much more sensible
Without ever letting go I lose you
Skeptical about it all the time
Hearts re-animate, but as for minds?
I’ll be chopping down trees
And buildings burn to the ground
I should’ve known.