just a poem

I just hate the ending of this poem. I am not done with this one.

at eight
a little man stands lonely in the house he made of all our conversations
where we talked
at one another- deaf
and dumb.

I want to write a poem and burn it, for the symbolism-
watch, as the words give themselves
up to all that- frantic
pain, and
pleasure
that comes from feeling fire in your veins.

I want to cut the sky open with the sharp edge of the moon,
slice that 4 AM blackness, directly between
the Big Dipper
and the Plediades.
I could make that incision with surgical accuracy-
antiseptic proficiency-
dissect the elegant corpse of the sky and feel nothing; in this life, baby
the world is my operating table,
and I could pull apart the stars and see the blankness in the sky
and I could make that shallow cut from your breastbone to your thighs
and I could sew shut your cold and focused eyes
and I would feel nothing, baby
nothing as I tried to excise
your still-beating heart, as you wake up and shout,
"I'M ALIVE!
...
Dear God,
I'm alive."
nothing, as I'd realize you
wanted to give us one last chance
to say our goodbyes.

I wouldn't feel anything
as I sutured the sky and put it in a box labeled "cremation"
but I could fake it for you, real good
fake pasison and meaning and sweetness in the trail
of frozen words I'm leaving behind, still
hanging
in the air..

Baby, I want to write so fast my words are the scorch marks instead of the road-
like I want to veer off the highway a million miles per hour and ride, higher, higher, igniting scraps that burn the sky as we
dance- baby, I want to play with the fire they built to burn our image
burning bright, not like toddlers or textbooks but bright,
like trumpets, like fanfare- bright,
like hospital corridors, like high-pitched tears-bright,
like stabbing pains, like the sun at 5 AM when you haven't slept for a WEEK-
baby, I want to watch flames jab at the ceremonial pyres of the sky.
I want to melt wine bottles and make them pop under the pressure of someone so hot
being - so -
cool, baby, I want to love you. I want to love you so hard Earthquakes scream our names and we only shudder, caught
up in all this silence. Baby, I want to love you---

but instead I'm sitting here in my sterile lab coat
over the operating table
writing a love poem
that became just a poem
when you
became dead to me.