Felix Culpa
We quarreled to bitter, burning degrees
(you)loving me
as a tender trespasser
a chew toy
boy
demanding compliance
forced feedings
down
to sock selection
(your)conspicuous usage of chlorine
blistering eyes
a woman my mother may have idolized
(your)disciplined hemlines
entirely circumspect
subtracting the abusements
how (your)words struck, in the rage of an enemy fire
and less, the undisturbed lust after hog's feet
I was heading for America
a better sow to plow
with spangly blue eyes
and ruddy virtue brimming inside her countenance
out of the despicable cold,
The harpy's fury
(you)poked at my shortness
magnified my retardations
I was a crouching slug in (your)supercilious shadows
Understanding I couldn't swim
as all the world knows
any banal fact
for example, water is wet
and a million times (your)augur's ball
pronounced death by sea
little legs shall not be inclined to desert the scalding Egyptian sands
was it (your)psychosis or mine ... doubts dressed as destiny?
I missed the exodus of the unsinkable ship.
The Titanic horn tolled whilst she distanced,
the mocking tintinnabulation
of elegiac bells.
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