ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE
Contracts of affection
might be compacts of depravity. One
is not unlike the other.
The house you rule. The horse you ride.
The whore of your convenience.
Moonlit clouds beyond
my bedroom window, obese
with possibility. God damn you.
It all comes off. Piece by
piece. Articles of clothing. Articles
in Ladies Home Journal. Imperfect accounting,
accounts received. Closed out.
A dead number. The ATM won’t take my card.
I’m sucked dry.
Nude figures in a still garden.
The same moon. Some flowers
do open in the night. Music.
A waltz between kisses. God damn you.
Increments of affection. struck off
in decrements of abuse. A buyout,
leveraged of that mutual fund, that
pays in diminishing per cent. It all
comes off. Not so special a delivery,
moistened with limber tongue.
Remembrances of breasts and thighs
and slick, sweet entries, in that column.
And an axe slices cleanly the stem
of a rose. Imperfect erasures
gloss the theft. We are a palimpsest, geologic.
God damn you.
Bubbles do burst. Discounting resistance,
objects of unlike weight do fall
at identical velocity. Economics
is not an exact science.
God damn your perfume.
God damn my readiness for more.