I'm on top of Mars,

and the Moon is smokin' hot.

There's people there— jerks, I mean—
smoking those cheap $10 brands of cigarettes
with their loser-colored caps,

and lover boy tattoos.

I'm on the balcony
where I throw love confessions at the sky,
and my favorite planet's Venus,

so I guess that's where they'll go—
Venus in my dreams, Venus in her blonde hair—

my ill-tempered lioness,
and the snarl when she bites my neck.

(She leaves me a secret; kisses me afterwards,
but I know I'm leaving,

and she knows, too.)

The air is a bright cyan;

I'm sitting high on red planet,
or at least I think the red I puff—ff stands for Mars,

and white for sex-dosed stars, and black;
black for the second before I'm about to wake—

up.

Five, it's five, on Earth — I wake for her,
and she's in her white sundress,

her favorite flower
in her hair;

the yellow that stands
for the sunflowers she loves.

My fingers reach for her, whispering:
(Where are you going today, tomorrow,

and the days after those?)

She turns around, her eyes meet mine—

perihelion. I breathe, or I try to;
it's — perihelion, my God,

I never once told her
she's the Venus in my dreams.

(I'm going to marry the man
who gives me sunflowers instead of roses,)
she said,

a year ago.

I gave her sunflowers for her birthday.
She still didn't marry me,

but it'd be funny if she did.

The answer to the joke's written inside the lines
of my palm;

so no one's even laughing anymore, so no one's here
on the roof of this tall building

still slamming the leaves of the flowers onto the ground—
she loves me not, she loves me not, she loves me not—

she never will.

I laugh:
at myself, at Mars.

Then Mars bursts;
red is a war flag.

I've been there, I know—
the smokin' hot Moon holds the blonde Venus' hand,

loosely—

(he was never really serious,
was he?)

Oh well, she—Venus says
and holds herself together in the comfort of my arms;
stops to say thank you but never really I love you,

and jumps off a roof on the twenty sixth.

There were flower petals
on the ground;

she smiles,

(and loves me not.)

I still put
the sunflowers on her deathbed—

I still remember
she loved these, even though she still wouldn't

marry me.