PARANOID PHANTASY
I want to suck your eye out, I say,

you say, please do not — but I can do it any way you like,

hammer, pitcher, kitchen knife,

what is love if not the execution of metaphors,

and, as always, I will do a clean job —

you say let’s go for a walk…

like you don’t get it…
            In all the timelines where I have a backbone

I take my fulfilled body to a new form, offer what I have

to you, or some disciplined other…

            In those times I really mean it, sex is a micropayment

off a loan of indifference, clothes ripple

with hostile potential, the mind shivers,

moulders, falls in, grows back, ringing like death metal

in a cave…
            Analysts study artists like children watch movies,

to get horny

and learn how to talk… it can’t all be cocaine, you say,

but I don’t see why not. I call my psychiatrist,

so he can tell me I’m pretty. good luck excluding me

from the community of reason, my charismatic landscape

of reality controls, a prime example

of what not to do, professionally, at the pub …
            The worse I feel, the more godlike. I am downtrodden and female,

but I was your husband in a past life. Statistically this is dangerous news…

Couples scream outside our house. There’s something about it …

it’s so realistic. Love is a new way to talk about yourself, and then it’s not,

it sucks and blows with the wind,

the plumbing sours, the bliss goes out,

the air wears down again …
            in the mood for an aggressive drive, I say, for the fifth time,

style is just repetition, don’t I know it, standing there with a drink in my hand —
            In my office it is always 3am

and a crisis, skinning traumas for luxury boots,

smiling like new leather at my own devices, condemning ‘sincerity’ —

            YES, I am afraid of feeling,

I am only brave about desire,

I try to describe what I have witnessed, and find

it is too late to fail better. Here I am,

in my individual personality,

a completely imaginary and self-contained problem,

rotating helplessly — 
            The thing is, I’d rather be devastated than bleaked out,

I face god like a flower seeks the sun,

my throat boils, I tell myself, YOU HAVE COMMITTED NO CRIME — and if I have,

I’m resolving a set of contradictions,

and I deserve to be rewarded for the work I’ve done …