One Interpretation of Your Silence

Probably I hurt your aesthetic feelings.

How I said a thing, how I held a lamp

to the night. These should walk without us—

words, the dark—is perhaps your view

of existence. I can’t know,

you provide no puppet theater,

no tumbling routine for me to engage

in spirited discourse. That a face

comes with every body, and a body

with every name, makes it seem

like we’re the same species,

when a cursory kissing shows how multiform

any one puckerer is. I’m sorry

I’m not the Wednesday or club sandwich

you expected, imagine my surprise

that you’re not the world peace

I really do want, it’s not just a thing

I say to the judges inspecting my cleavage.

If you’ll try again I’ll try again,

however trying we are. “To the puppies” is a phrase

I carry around in search of the context

in which shouting it will change everything.

If you have no such rip-chord, we really

shouldn’t be seen together in public,

for you are the matter for which I

am the anti-matter, and as “Lost in Space”

showed us if it showed us nothing else,

it’s not good for life when they meet,

and I want to do what is good for life,

because I want life to return the favor.