The Mad Poet’s Love Song

I live profligately. Dispense
big words for free.
Buy books for a single phrase
and then return, like some odd
fish, again and again
to the the source. I am promiscuous.
I leave books in my bed,
fall asleep clutching stories
I’ve only just met.
They wake me later
but never remember my name.

Mad women love this way,
and thieves, giving everything
for style, for the flash
in the mind, the pull
at the gut. Risking everything –
old loves, old views,
for the day’s perfect word,
a phrase that caresses.

Don’t mock me.
There is a strange fidelity
in falling asleep to the chatter
of the printed page and
waking to the morning paper.

No? Try filling
your mouth with rhymes
and spitting them slowly,
like watermelon seeds,
across the lawn. Then
come back and tell me I’m wrong.

Lynn Ungar
Blessing the Bread: Meditations
Boston, Skinner House Books, 1996

now sadly out of print. Look for it at Abe Books or other fine purveyors of used and antiquarian books…