Friday, January 26, 2024

DIRTY WORK

If emotion 
is a skill, we are novices, 
all—apprentices  

to passion until 
the day we are retired. 

Those magical potions 
we strive to learn 
and perfect—

drafts of warmth 
and respect for one another—

are diluted  
in solutions of pure frustration,

sugared dust of tenderness 
bound-up 
in poison lust.

Even the lightning-
strike hex 
of our grief 

gets obscured by 
anger, self-
pity, disbelief—to say nothing of 

the willow wand 
of love, which, at the slightest
touch, combusts. 

Nowhere does there seem to be 
so much as a journeyman we  
can learn from. 

Surely, in the absence 
of some reprimanding master, 
a job like this 

will be the 
death of us.