My Love is Too Much

My love is too much
It embarrasses you
Blood, poems, babies
Red needs that telephone
From foreign countries
Black needs that spatter the pages
Of your white papery heart

You would rather have
A girl with simpler needs:
Lunch, sex, undemanding loving
Dinner, wine, bed
The occasional blow-job
And needs that are never red
As gaping wounds
But cool and blue as television screens in tract houses

Oh my love
Those simple girls
With simple needs
Read my books too
They tell me they feel
The same as I do
They tell me I transcribe
The language of their hearts
They tell me I translate
Their mute, unspoken pain
Into the white light of language

Oh love
No love is ever wholly undemanding
It can pretend coolness
Until the pain comes
Until the first baby comes
Howling her own infant need into a universe
That never summoned her

The love you seek
Cannot be found
Except in the white pages of
Recipe books
It is cooking you seek
Not love
Cooking with sex coming after
Cool sex
That speaks to the penis alone
And not the howling chaos of the heart