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.