love through Eliot

You tell me I remind you of Lady Macbeth,

And I quirk a small smile.

You tell me I'm too strong for my own good

And I let you believe it.

Women keep passing us as we go

As you gaze at me and tell me I'm beautiful.

I refuse to take the compliment, and

Their distant words of Buonarotti reach us on the wind.

You ask me if I feel,

I won't show how that hurts me.

The mermaids call to you and you have no idea

That it's only me

Keeping you from drowning.

I won't live up to your perception conception

Or the feeble wisps of your longings,

You, trying to resurrect me and display

My head on silver.

That's not it.

Not it at all, you whisper.

You stir your coffee and I drink my tea

And the yellow of the faded kitchen table watches us,

Balefully,

Remembering to me an echo of cheap motels

Of muggy passion.

I can tell that when you smell

My perfume

That you remember too.

There indeed is time,

Time for you to find out my habits

Time to quote Shakespeare and Eliot

Time to discover the undiscovered country.

You grin at me as I laugh at you

Calling you Hamlet as you call me Lady.

I give you a peach and you hear the mermaids sing again,

And while the voices wake you I watch the freckles on your nose

Until you ask "what is it?" and I'm back in October.

We are Fools

And we are dying as we sit here

But there's so much fun in doing it.

Do I dare to sleep in your arms

Or is that what you conceive of me?

I believe, I believe,

Yet when you set a pillow by my head I loose grasp

And things lingering disappear.

I save you from drowning, but I'm drowning in you

You're a spot that won't come out.

All my perfumes and all my remembrances can't change that.

I hear someone snicker and I'm afraid, I'm afraid.

I'm tossing and I'm turning,

Then you look at me.

Suddenly I remember Michelangelo,

And I hear the mermaids sing.