(for Karina Klesko, my haiku teacher/publisher)
I lost the blackish-white, the luscious, in a word
& see now under coal eyes
lips scowl (if charcoal lips can!), a neck stretch
She'd try to see me, too—
for she's angular, keen & all that, from hairline to chin
but cruel as a crow's underwing; luscious
& neat as a blind hem
I lost that, too
There must be something, after all the carnage
in a brow's spectral ash,
or smudgy nose, at the least, to connect with
(& save me from her storms)
Can the blackish eyes have ever been right?
They weren't;
I felt the collapse
Sweetish-grey is the near absent nose, her upper lip
that didn't crush entirely,
sparing viewer but didn't let go of me, either
No wonder the many potential poets,
me among them, see her go, too, the sweetish one
with black rose in each eye,
crude pasty brow
Problem is she's written in herself, in blackish-white,
already a role (that of 'loved' or 'not')
you get the minute you look Which I did & then lost And the stout skies, outside my window,
flat-bottomed & heading steadily for water, whenever I looked,
let me know it!
Rigid, adored in charcoal, & letting me know it