Men Don't Cry

We met like financial planner and client
to resolve the final details
of a high-risk investment gone sour.
Correct eye contact, consensual
amicability, a contract negotiated
and acceptable to both parties,
signed with decorum, notarized, filed under

Experimental Ventures, Failed.
And though we omitted no detail, left no
note unvoiced, I recall our tenor, the dialect
we picked, as if we were ambassadors

and not the poverty-stricken nations we represent.
Yes, effective negotiation is direct and clear;
efficient business remains unmuddled by emotion.
Facts are facts and nothing more. I wonder, however,
if I wouldn't trade the four-four of our
funeral march, ceremonious and staid
under sigh-cast Herzensdämmerung

FOR VALHALLA IN FLAMES     an aria scored for the ARDOR in which we BURNED     expulsive exchanges     muddy and jugular     shelled by PLosives and retroFLEXes     fountainic     GEYSEROUS spewstaining our double Windsored ties     RENDING ASUNDER     shrapnel-wounding bystanders slashing AND burning     chest cavity Valkyries pulling pins from napalm grenades     O INFLAMMABLE FLOODRIVER

we are swept away with table and chairs, powerless against our LoveDeath snatching clipped breath from under our ribs and yes, we choke on vulcan smoke for Pompeii breathes again Dresden February thirteen nineteen forty-five San Francisco April eighteen nineteen hundred and six

gasping for air or water third time down won't surface again-don't lie and say we're less than doomed, that you and I survived unchanged

that you                            and I                            are not                             utterly

utterly.