Why
When something beneath the eye
has been born
must we zoom down to zero in
the analytic sights of some chunk of glass ?

Will you say that fear of knowledge
is bad
if I tell you that my hands
were not made of that cool grasping metal
which are the trappings of well-versed heads ?

I find it hard to play with lenses
with easy finger exercises
like they do
though I can see you now, I admit,
the naked weight on some dull butcher’s scale
and everybody’s woman
and only the butcher’s thumb between you
and the rest
and being so lovely and tender
you’d definitely not end up in a poor man’s belly
for some unhungry success
would have his wife’s daily
fetch you to a nice big fridge.

What makes me twitch at the lips
is that you’d have no choice in that set-up
being the choice yourself.

Sometimes we all seem butcher’s meat
Or just plain butchers
and our words are sometimes knives of wisdom
that we like to understand because
they’re nice and clean and sharp
But they’re not ours then
and I feel more eloquent simply gaping
at things I never have understood.

this is all so much offal for the flies;

to see the scales in all their massive
deathly lead
is a simple, almost childish vision
but why should children have
the best of it ?

We don’t have to learn love
do we,
to know what happens when we’re all alone
together ?
But that is a question not an answer.