I have so many questions:

Why do poets confess the loves

they cannot bear

in public? Why do they trala

lalalala upon the page

while making impossible

the flesh that breathes

in the next room?

Does the flower wear a feminine

or masculine face or is it genderless?

Is the blue dahlia

a figurative expression

for what is

impossible

or unattainable,

which is to say like many species

of love having indeterminate ends,

for not all love tends to bed

but may end itself

in suicidal flowers? Is, in fact, the word "dahlia"

the name for "a particular shade

of red"? Does she love red?

She says, and wears it, the rings

holding her blouse together also

make her breasts more noticeable

and more bare for being broken

by iron rings. And how can the eye

not look and love the sweet pores

of the animal flesh, so poor

in its alienating

isolations? Why does

the man she walks beside

have my face; why do I introduce

myself to myself

in another's mirror?

Was it true, as the philosophers said,

that all love is but the reflection

of an ideal form

that finds itself in many faces,

mirrored in this gender

or aspect, but always

the same serious

tiger of the flesh, growling

and turning itself to butter? And if the universe

should rip open its seams to all impossibles

who would we be? in bed with whom

or in what blue dahlia beds?

The introduction of myself to myself
took place at 0420 hours
on the 15th day of February 2002
in another's mirror. The mirror
was the legal property of InterContinental Hotels Group
and was situate in Room 201 of the Holiday Inn Express,
in a town I'd rather not name at the moment
because that would give the game away
and provoke a gang of thugs to come get me.
I said hello to myself and told myself
that life is strange, tomorrow is another day,
and there are plenty more fish in the sea.
This was enough platitudes for that time of day,
for any time of day, for any day,
and I began to pull myself together. My feet
had walked a long way away from my heart,
my hair was wild, my blood
was coursing through an intricate network
of pipes and conduits, access to which
could only be obtained after several hours
of serious bureaucracy. If only I had kept myself
all in a bag, tied together at the top
with a twine that would have been cheap
but unbreakable. If only I had
not worn that shirt women find
so stupidly attractive. And if she had
not had such noticeable rings
holding her breasts together. I am weak.
I am weak I am weak.
Did I say I was weak? This is true.