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.
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.
