“Where were you in the marriage season?
Now all the available men are gone,
You pitch yourself up and moan to the sky,
‘O heaven, O Earth!
Can’t you just toss me a little husband?’
The sky pokes out his head and replies,
‘You were too choosy when the merchandise was in
go home now we’re all sold out.'”

“I wandered the house looking for a blank notebook
today, until I found one of the small spiral ones
I prefer. It had tacky shots of mountain climbers
on the cover, and read ‘Dig In!’ with bright letters.
I don’t prefer the styling, but appreciate the portability.
And though it was in my house, the notebook
wasn’t mine, and wasn’t empty. 

Inside it had lists. Lists of bands, places, problems
—with notes detailing why my ex-girlfriend was unhappy.
My name appeared on most pages. It was hers,
left on a bookshelf for over one year.
She always kept lists, as if her life could be categorized
into columns of good and bad, written repeatedly
like an incantation, banishment spell, or scale. 

There was a section detailing which albums
were best of the year, another with her all-time favorite
movies.  One more with the pros and cons
of her parents, and a paragraph on how
I was controlling and didn’t care. There was a travelogue
of notable locations in the desert Southwest,
filled out with names of people we had known
in a little town. I even found some suggestions
that, by now, she was only with me for the dogs. 

Still, it was only a quarter full of this shit, 
and I wanted the notebook. So, I ripped out her pages
stuck them in the winter fire. It made me
happy. Filled me up, like I was drunk
in a train-car lounge, and every time I checked my wallet,
I would find another twenty. Maybe there 
would be weeper country music playing
and I’d be hoping the fiddle would take the melody, 
and in the last thirty seconds, it would.
The suspense would all be worth it. The heartache
would become transcendent. I’d jump
off my stool and dance right there on the train.
The snow would be too high for the wolves
to give chase. Their eyes would cut tree limbs
as they raised their heads to howl.”

“If
you came back
I’d treat you 
like a lost Matisse
couch you like a Pasha
dance a Sevillana
leap and backflip like a Taiwanese diva
bang cymbals like a Chinese opera
roar like a Fellini soundtrack
and laugh like the little dog that
watched the cow jump over the moon

I’d be your clown
I’d tell you funny stories and
paint clouds on the walls of my house
dress the bed in its best linen
And while you slept
I’d hold my breath and watch
you move like a sunflower

How beautiful you are
like the color inside an ear
like a conch shell
like a Modigliani nude

I’ll cut a bit of your hair this time
so that you’ll never leave me
Ah, the softest hair
Ah, the softest

If
you came back
I’d give you parrot tulips and papayas
laugh at your stories
Or I wouldn’t say a word which,
as you know, is hard for me

I know when you grew tired
off you’d go to Patagonia
Cairo  Istanbul
Katmandu
Laredo

Meanwhile
I’ll have savored you like an oyster
memorized you
held you under my tongue
learned you by heart
So that when you leave
I’ll write poems”

You Bring Out The Mexican In Me – Sandra Cisneros

“You bring out the Mexican in me.
The hunkered thick dark spiral.
The core of a heart howl.
The bitter bile.
The tequila lágrimas on Saturday all
through next weekend Sunday.
You are the one I’d let go the other loves for,
surrender my one-woman house.
Allow you red wine in bed,
even with my vintage lace linens.
Maybe. Maybe.

For you.

You bring out the Dolores del Río in me.
The Mexican spitfire in me.
The raw navajas, glint and passion in me.
The raise Cain and dance with the rooster-footed devil in me.
The spangled sequin in me.
The eagle and serpent in me.
The mariachi trumpets of the blood in me.
The Aztec love of war in me.
The fierce obsidian of the tongue in me.
The berrinchuda, bien-cabrona in me.
The Pandora’s curiosity in me.
The pre-Columbian death and destruction in me.
The rainforest disaster, nuclear threat in me.
The fear of fascists in me.
Yes, you do. Yes, you do.

You bring out the colonizer in me.
The holocaust of desire in me.
The Mexico City ‘85 earthquake in me.
The Popocatepetl/Ixtacchuatl in me.
The tidal wave of recession in me.
The Agustín Lara hopeless romantic in me.
The barbacoa taquitos on Sunday in me.
The cover the mirrors with cloth in me.

Sweet twin. My wicked other,
I am the memory that circles your bed nights,
that tugs you taut as moon tugs ocean.
I claim you all mine,
arrogant as Manifest Destiny.
I want to rattle and rent you in two.
I want to defile you and raise hell.
I want to pull out the kitchen knives,
dull and sharp, and whisk the air with crosses.
Me sacas lo mexicana en mi,
like it or not, honey.

You bring out the Uled-Nayl in me.
The stand-back-white-bitch in me.
The switchblade in the boot in me.
The Acapulco cliff diver in me.
The Flecha Roja mountain disaster in me.
The dengue fever in me.
The ¡Alarma! murderess in me.
I could kill in the name of you and think
it worth it. Brandish a fork and terrorize rivals,
female and male, who loiter and look at you,
languid in your light. Oh,

I am evil. I am the filth goddess Tlazoltéotl.
I am the swallower of sins.
The lust goddess without guilt.
The delicious debauchery. You bring out
the primordial exquisiteness in me.
The nasty obsession in me.
The corporal and venial sin in me.
The original transgression in me.

Red ocher. Yellow ocher. Indigo. Cochineal.
Pin. Copal. Sweetgrass. Myrrh.
All you saints, blessed and terrible,
Virgen de Guadalupe, diosa Coatlicue,
I invoke you.

Quiero ser tuya. Only yours. Only you.
Quiero amarte. Atarte. Amarrarte.
Love the way a Mexican woman loves. Let
me show you. Love the only way I know how”

“Bring me a drink.
I need to think a little.
Paper. Pen.
And I could use the stink
of a good cigar—even
though the sun’s out
The grackles in the trees.
The grackles inside my heart.
Broken feathers and stiff wings.

I could jump.
But I don’t.
You could kill me.
But you won’t.

The grackles
calling to each other.
The long hours.
The long hours.
The long hours.”

“You were full of stories.
Was that red jacket of yours really
once Bob Marley’s?
The man you live with actually
your brother?
Those three women from Valencia
all your lovers?

It doesn’t matter.
Venice was a good adventure.
Dancing through canals.
Ducking bridges from a motorboat
that sped delirious at 4 a.m.
under a laughing moon.

So I let you down.
Didn’t give in and fall
under the
spell of a bona fide
Venetian artist on the street,
replete with easel.  A modern
Casanova—wow.

I remember that pathetic last ciao
you gave me at the railway station—
you said you felt as if
you’d bought an ice-cream cone
and it had fallen to the ground
before you had a chance to taste it.

Bought.
Always that metaphor somehow or other.
And what was I
except an item not for sale
Well.

After all, a man invests his time,
his money even,
though this was fifty-fifty.
I owed nothing.

Tell me,
one artist to another,
what does a woman owe a man,
and isn’t freedom what you believe in?
Even the freedom to say no?
At least you did the night before
when we clinked our glasses to the Muses
and our common god.

I don’t know.
For all that talk of liberation
I still felt that seam of anger
when I danced with you
and sometimes not with you at all.

What if I hadn’t gone home alone?
Say my eye had gotten tangled with another’s.
Or maybe yours.
It might’ve happened that way.
You never know.

But to tell the truth
I think true nature rises
when the body dances.
Perhaps that’s why I never
have one partner,
prefer to dance alone.

No, I won’t 
come to Sardinia with you.
Or even Spain.
The truth is that uncomfortable next morning
we had nothing to say to one another.
Hardly a word until we reached the station.

An ice-cream cone.

In case you change your mind, you said.
I know you won’t, but just in case,
I’ll wait in Venice seven days.

You were right about one thing—
I didn’t come back.”

“The love we thought would never stop
now cools like a congealing chop.
The kisses that were hot as curry
are bird-pecks taken in a hurry.
The hands that held electric charges
now lie inert as four moored barges.
The feet that ran to meet a date
are running slow and running late.
The eyes that shone and seldom shut
are victims of a power cut.
The parts that then transmitted joy
are now reserved and cold and coy.
Romance, expected once to stay,
has left a note saying GONE AWAY.”

“Don’t talk to me of love. I’ve had an earful
And I get tearful when I’ve downed a drink or two.
I’m one of your talking wounded.
I’m a hostage. I’m marooned.
But I’m in Paris with you.

Yes I’m angry at the way I’ve been bamboozled
And resentful at the mess I’ve been through.
I admit I’m on the rebound
And I don’t care where are we bound.
I’m in Paris with you.

Do you mind if we do not go to the Louvre
If we say sod off to sodding Notre Dame,
If we skip the Champs Elysées
And remain here in this sleazy
Old hotel room
Doing this and that
To what and whom
Learning who you are,
Learning what I am.

Don’t talk to me of love. Let’s talk of Paris,
The little bit of Paris in our view.
There’s that crack across the ceiling
And the hotel walls are peeling
And I’m in Paris with you.

Don’t talk to me of love. Let’s talk of Paris.
I’m in Paris with the slightest thing you do.
I’m in Paris with your eyes, your mouth,
I’m in Paris with… all points south.
Am I embarrassing you?
I’m in Paris with you.”

“She was the kind of gal who would look elegant
even if she was wearing nothing but handcuffs.
She had a way of leaning against a wall in an alley
that made you think she was wearing a gold lamé
evening gown, balancing an onyx cigarette holder
on her fingertips while a diamond bracelet 
flashed from her wrist. When she sat on a bench
in the station house, doing her nails, humming 
to herself, I said a silent prayer that she would not
raise her skirt to adjust her stockings.  If she did
I’d have to think about baseball, which I despise,
or the locations of seemingly unrelated homicides
forming a crude calligraphy of her name on a map.
By now you’ve guessed that I was nothing to her,
an omniscient, voice-over narrator watching
     her sashay
in and out of trouble in a hundred different locations.
And what was that stupid tune she always hummed?
It was, ‘one-two-three the conga,’ the same one
     I found
myself humming after I brought her in for questioning
and got nowhere.  It was ‘one-two-three the conga,’ 
     stuck
in my head as I stood in the interrogation room, alone,
rubbing lipstick from her Styrofoam cup against my lips.
So I thought I could latch on to the small waist of
     happiness
and follow it anywhere, but pursuing happiness
is like pursuing a murderer — it has its depressing
     moments.”

“My passion is as mustard strong;
I sit all sober sad;
Drunk as a piper all day long,
Or like a March-hare mad.

Round as a hoop the bumpers flow;
I drink, yet can’t forget her;
For though as drunk as David’s sow
I love her still the better.

Pert as a pear-monger I’d be,
If Molly were but kind;
Cool as a cucumber could see
The rest of womankind.

Like a stuck pig I gaping stare,
And eye her o’er and o’er;
Lean as a rake, with sighs and care,
Sleek as a mouse before.

Plump as a partridge was I known,
And soft as silk my skin;
My cheeks as fat as butter grown,
But as a goat now thin!

I melancholy as a cat,
Am kept awake to weep;
But she, insensible of that,
Sound as a top can sleep.

Hard is her heart as flint or stone,
She laughs to see me pale;
And merry as a grig is grown,
And brisk as bottled ale.

The God of Love at her approach
Is busy as a bee;
Hearts sound as any bell or roach,
Are smit and sigh like me.

Ah me! as thick as hops or hail,
The fine men crowd about her;
But soon as dead as a door-nail
Shall I be, if without her.

Straight as my leg her shape appears,
O were we join’d together!
My heart would be scot-free from cares
And lighter than a feather.

As fine as five-pence is her mien,
No drum was ever tighter;
Her glance is as the razor keen,
And not the sun is brighter.

As soft as pap her kisses are,
Methinks I taste them yet;
Brown as a berry is her hair,
Her eyes as black as jet.

As smooth as glass, as white as curds
Her pretty hand invites;
Sharp as her needle are her words,
Her wit like pepper bites.

Brisk as a body-louse she trips,
Clean as a penny drest;
Sweet as a rose her breath and lips,
Round as the globe her breast.

Full as an egg was I with glee,
And happy as a king:
Good Lord! how all men envied me!
She loved like any thing.

But false as hell! she, like the wind,
Chang’d, as her sex must do;
Though seeming as the turtle kind,
And like the gospel true.

If I and Molly could agree,
Let who would take Peru!
Great as an Emperor should I be,
And richer than a Jew.

Till you grow tender as a chick,
I’m dull as any post;
Let us like burs together stick,
And warm as any toast.

You’ll know me truer than a die,
And wish me better sped;
Flat as a flounder when I lie,
And as a herring dead.

Sure as a gun she’ll drop a tear
And sigh, perhaps, and wish,
When I am rotten as a pear,
And mute as any fish.”

“We got that waiting in the clinic silence.
That shhh don’t tell nobody what we did silence.
And I’m so tired of being your hamper that
I’m about to dump out those week old stained ketchup secrets and do laundry in that silence.

You like keeping it quiet.
But my vagina is not your walk in closet.
You wanna stuff your unmentionables through me,
Want a place to hang up your insecurities,
Want me to keep check of your hand me downs and Prada,

Waiting for every occasion to put me back behind closed doors and lock me in the darkness.
Nobody knows you hold my hand
And nobody knows I call you baby
And nobody knows you write anonymous poems about me — the type you can’t post on Facebook.

Because regardless of what you may think I’m worth or what you may think I deserve,
I will never be that girl,
The girl that’s only allowed to make you smile when she´s making you orgasm,
That girl whose day job is daydreaming waiting for her night job.

That girl who’s so in love she will turn her body over for your superficial touch.
You hide me behind lock doors and bed sheets because if you dare reached out

Then everybody would still know that it was still about me.
Living in your heart and in your mind
you’re still wrapped up in me.

My tear ducts you own them,
My hearts strings you got them tied around your pencils and fingers.
Yeah, you may say it´s over
And you never admit that you love me

But you don’t have to ’cause your silence speaks volumes.
You wanna hold me in your arms rock me to sleep, then act like you don’t know me.
As if the moments we spent together are some kind of down payment.

As if my bedroom were layaway
And that’s all you ever do is layaway
Curl up beside me but in the morning pull up the hoodie and run the other way.

I’m like that bastard child
The reason why Daddy never stuck around in the first place
But for me rejection doesn´t come every other weekend.
It comes when you lower your head and pass by without speaking

And I remember there was a time you could barely take your eyes off me.
I just don’t understand why it’s not okay for you to love me.
I guess you just want me to be that girl.

The girl everybody wants to sleep with but nobody wants to be with.
That girl
Only good enough for finding a suitable replacement.

And not trying to make up for the mistakes
But you try to convince yourself that she means everything and you want nothing to do with me
But come on baby she looks just like me!

Read the signs or at least the facial features
Cause I was your first, your only,
The prototype and she´s just a duplicate

And you can never make copies without first consulting the blueprint!
You know what they say the sequel is never better than the original.
And she tries to write you stories but you know they’re only half as good,

So half squinting you only hold her half as tight as you should.
Because your other half is tangled between my bed sheets,
And your other half is complete within my mind, soul, and body,

And your other half is french tonguing me Monday through Friday.
I’m not fighting for joint custody.
I’m fighting for RESPECT

Because I will never be content with being your back door ho.
Your something on the side,
Your something to do on during those lonely nights,

Your closet freak.
You will never reduce me to be a skank and a whore
And though I love you,

I’d rather spend every night crying alone on my bedroom floor than to ever be ‘that girl’!”

“With thorn bushes,
with a flailing razor strop,
I drive you from my heart,
throw rocks at you,
throw gravel shards
at your two burnt matchstick
eyelid slits. The black
coachwhip snake
of your smile I hatchet
with a dull carving knife;
with the sharpest pick
pummel your bloodless cyanide
peach pit heart.  With knitting
needles, nails, I drive you
from every cell of memory.
I stab slivers through
the bride of your nose,
your brow’s overhang,
then hammer down
your high-peaked cheek bones.
From my body I purge
you like the crabs
of cancer, like a heavy
affliction of the lungs, like
misery in my joints.
I drive you, drive you
from my heart.

Scarecrow, scarecrow,
I infect the straws of you
with scorpions. Armies
of stinging ants march you
from my thoughts. Your silent
secretive glacial soul I drive
away from me. Your once seraph
face turns to cabbage,
a common worm-eaten
scalped head-of-a-cabbage.
I bruise your ears
with gunpowder screams.
I drive you, drive you out.

I see you sleeping under houses,
see your scarred dog face snarling up.
I put the feral dog you are
in a river skiff come unmoored
in an ice floe when flood waters
hide the rocks, watch you trudge
to shore, legs bleeding as you
labor through hip-deep snow,
face shining with hoarfrost.
I hold furnace slag
to the frayed seams
of the clothes I made for you,
to the rags that are your hair.
The pitiful fire you become
empties my heart of you.
I throw your bones into the rain-
soaked street, make you
no different than mud, throw
your ashes to the Nor’easters so
no part of you will have another
for companionship. My hands,
arms, my clothes covered
with grit, the soot of you
thick on me.

When I am bathed
and empty of you, I sweep
you into the corner
of an unheated room,
bury tintypes of you
in a trunk under the bed where
your onyx eyes pale
from mold never again
to glare at me as if to spit.
With your face
driven into history, I finally,
finally free the river
of the mire of you,

and cross over.”

“Today I am, I don’t know how,
today all I am ready for is suffering,
today I have no friends,
today the only thing I have is the desire
to rip out my heart by the roots
and stick it underneath a shoe.

Today that dry thorn is growing strong again,
today is the day of crying in my kingdom,
depression unloads today in my chest
a depressed heavy metal.

Today my destiny is too much for me.
And I’m looking for death down by my hands,
looking at knives with affection,
and I remember that friendly ax,
and all I think about is the tallest steeples
and making a fatal leap serenely.

It it weren’t for… I don’t know what,
my heart would write a suicide note,
a note I carry hidden there,
I would make an inkwell out of my heart,
a fountain of syllables, and good-byes and gifts,
and you stay here I’d say to the world.

I was born under a rotten star.
My grief is that I only have one grief
and it weighs more than all the joys together.
A love affair has left me with my arms hanging down
and I can’t lift them anymore.
Don’t you see how disillusioned my mouth is?
How unsatisfied my eyes are?

The more I look inward the more I mourn!
Cut off this pain?—who has the scissors?

Yesterday, tomorrow, today
suffering for everything,
my heart is a sad goldfish bowl,
a pen of dying nightingales.

I have plenty of heart.

Today to rip out my heart,
I who have a bigger heart than anyone,
and having that, I am the bitterest also.

I don’t know why, I don’t know how or why
I let my life keep on going every day.”

“It kills me, you’re so pure and chaste:
though I confess, my love, I’m guilty,
I snatched that kiss; yes, it was I
who sipped the flower of your face.

I sipped the flower of your face,
and since that great day and deed
your face, so weighty and so scrupulous,
droops, falling like a yellow leaf.

The ghost of that delinquent kiss
now haunts your cheekbone, growing ever
dark, heavy and immense.

How jealously you stay awake!
How zealously you watch my lips
against (God forbid) another break!”

“you will not punish me
you will not split me in two
you will not knock on my doors
you will not tap on my wall
you will not enter
you will not exit
you will not park your car in my garage
you will not contain your missile in my silo
you will not conjugate me
you will not fiddle faddle or dally me
you will not find my treasure
you will not lick my pot
you will not fill my refrigerator
you will not butter my roll
you will not toast my bagel”

“I went back in the alley
And I opened up my door.
All her clothes was gone:
She wasn’t home no more.

I pulled back the covers,
I made down the bed.
A whole lot of room
Was the only thing I had.”

“I have loved in vain
and now my beauty fades
like these cherry blossoms
paling in the long rains of spring
that I gaze upon alone.”

“May the warmest thing in your bed be the thinnest of blankets.
May you need a root canal every year of your life.
May you start holy rolling, speaking in tongues and hollering
   ‘Thank you Jesus!’ in synagogue.
May the computer swallow your doctoral dissertation
    and belch out something that reads like
Howdy Doody on LSD.
May you leave that high-powered job interview
    and discover that your fly is open.
May you be at the top of every telemarketer’s list.
May you be turned down as a contestant for Love Connection.
May your hairline recede with exceeding speed.
May you dial the first half of my number a thousand times—
knowing that if you ever call,
my woman lover will answer the phone.”

“It’s been weeks since I’ve heard from you
and you called this morning;
I was glad to hear from you

even though I don’t know what to do
with your size 32 shorts that are still here
and don’t fit me or belong in my drawer,

not even with my underwear.  I threw the rose
you bought a month ago
out with the trash
two weeks ago yesterday

along with any hope
of seeing you again in this life.

As for the coca-colas
in the back of the refrigerator:
they only remind me I came so close,
within inches, of loving you.

You know that it’s been a month.
I know that too because I’m bleeding again,
and a woman can read most things

by the shape of the moon
and when she last bled.

these are the indices
of marriages, of careers and wars,
of the length and depth of a love affair.”

“My thoughts are crabbed and sallow,
My tears like vinegar,
Or the bitter blinking yellow
Of an acetic star.

Tonight the caustic wind, love
Gossips late and soon,
And I wear the wry-faced pucker of 
The sour lemon moon.

While like an early summer plum,
Puny, green, and tart,
Droops upon its wizened stem
My lean, unripened heart.”

“I HAD a love in soft south land,
Beloved through April far in May;
He waited on my lightest breath,
And never dared to say me nay.

He saddened if my cheer was sad,
But gay he grew if I was gay;
We never differed on a hair,
My yes his yes, my nay his nay.

The wedding hour was come, the aisles
Were flushed with sun and flowers that day; 
I pacing balanced in my thoughts:
‘It’s quite too late to think of nay.’—

My bridegroom answered in his turn,
Myself had almost answered ‘yea:’
When through the flashing nave I heard
A struggle and resounding ‘nay.’

Bridemaids and bridegroom shrank in fear,
But I stood high who stood at bay:
‘And if I answer yea, fair Sir,
What man art thou to bar with nay?’ 

He was a strong man from the north,
Light-locked, with eyes of dangerous grey:
‘Put yea by for another time
In which I will not say thee nay.’

He took me in his strong white arms,
He bore me on his horse away
O’er crag, morass, and hairbreadth pass,
But never asked me yea or nay.

He made me fast with book and bell,
With links of love he makes me stay; 
Till now I’ve neither heart nor power
Nor will nor wish to say him nay.” 

“I’m dying of you,
my love—dying of the love of you,
of my dire need for my skin of you,
of my soul and my mouth of you,
of the miserable wretch I am without you.

I’m dying of you and me, of both
of us, of this—
ripped to shreds, torn apart,
the two of us are dying, dying of it.

We’re dying in my room where I’m alone,
on my bed where you’re missing,
in the streets where my arm goes unaccompanied,
at the movies and in parks, on trams,
in places where your head rested on my shoulder,
and my hand held yours,
and all of you I know like myself.

We die in places lent to air
so that you can be away from me,
and go to airless enclaves where
I cover you with my skin
and we come to know each other in ourselves,
unworlded, joy-saturated, without end.

We’re dying, this we know, ignore, we are dying
together, now, sundered
each from the other, daily,
moulded into multiple statues,
in gestures we don’t see,
in our hands that need us.
We’re dying, love, I’m dying in your womb
that I neither nibble nor kiss,
in your sweet and living thighs,
and in your unending flesh, I’m dying of masks,
and of dark and incessant triangles.
I’m dying of your body and of mine,
of our death, love, I, we, are dying.
In love’s pit at all hours,
inconsolable, in sobs and screams
inside me, I mean to say, I call you,
those who are being born, who are coming from
behind, from you, those who reach you, are calling you.
We are dying, love, and, hour by hour,
we do nothing but die a little more,
and write and talk to each and die together.”

“The fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean;
The winds of heaven mix forever,
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one another’s being mingle:—
Why not I with thine?

See, the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister flower could be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea;—
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?”

“I woke up this morning with an awful achin’ head
I woke up this morning with an awful achin’ head
My new man had left me just a room and an empty bed

Bought me a coffee grinder, got the best one I could find
Bought me a coffee grinder, got the best one I could find
So he could grind my coffee, ’cause he had a brand new grind

He’s a deep-sea diver, with a stroke that can’t go wrong
He’s a deep-sea diver, with a stroke that can’t go wrong
He can touch the bottom, and his wind holds out so long

He knows how to thrill me and he thrills me night and day
Lord, he knows how to thrill me and he thrills me night and day
He’s got a new way of loving, almost takes my breath away

Lord, he’s got that sweet somethin’ and I told my gal friend Lou
He’s got that sweet somethin’ and I told my gal friend Lou
From the way she’s ravin’, she must have gone and tried it too

When my bed get empty, make me feel awful mean and blue
When my bed get empty, make me feel awful mean and blue
My springs are gettin’ rusty, sleepin’ single like I do

Bought him a blanket, pillow for his head at night
Bought him a blanket, pillow for his head at night
And I bought him a mattress, so he could lay just right

He came home one evening with his spirit way up high
He came home one evening with his spirit way up high
What he had to give me, made me wring my hands and cry

He give me a lesson that I never had before
He give me a lesson that I never had before
When he got through teachin’ me, from my elbow down was sore

He boiled my first cabbage and he made it awful hot
He boiled my first cabbage and he made it awful hot
When he put in the bacon, it overflowed the pot

When you get good lovin’, never go and spread the news
When you get good lovin’, never go and spread the news
Yeah, it will double cross you and leave you with them empty bed blues”

“You gave and gave,
and now you say you’re poor.
I’m in your debt, you say,
and there’s no way to repay you
but by my giving more.

Your pound of flesh is what you must have?
Here’s what I’ve saved.

This sip of wine is yours, 
this sieve of laughter.  Yours,
too, these broken haloes
from my cigarette, these coals
that flicker when the salt wind howls
and the letter box blinks like a loud
eyelid over the empty floor.

I’ll send this, too, this gale between rains,
this wild day.  Its cold so cold
I want to break it into panes
like new ice on a pond; then pay it
pain by pain to your account.
Let it freeze us both into some numb country!
Giving and taking might be the same there.
A future of measurement and blame
gone in a few bitter minutes.”

“I used to visit all the very gay places,
Those come-what-may places,
Where one relaxes on the axis of the wheel of life
To get the feel of life
From jazz and cocktails.
The girls I knew had sad and sullen gray faces,
With distingué traces
That used to be there.
You could see where
They’d been washed away
By too many through the day
Twelve o’clock tails.
Then you came along
With your siren song
To tempt me to madness.
I thought for a while
That your poignant smile
Was tinged with the sadness
Of a great love for me.
Ah, yes, I was wrong,
Again, I was wrong!
Life is lonely again,
And only last year
Ev’rything seemed so sure.
Now life is awful again,
A troughful of hearts could only be a bore.
A week in Paris will ease the bite of it.
All I care is to smile in spite of it.
I’ll forget you, I will,
While yet you are still
Burning inside my brain.
Romance is mush, stifling those who strive.
I’ll live a lush life in some small dive,
And there I’ll be, while I rot with the rest
Of those whose lives are lonely too.”

“The want of you is like no other thing;
It smites my soul with sudden sickening;
It binds my being with a wreath of rue—
   This want of you.  

It flashes on me with the waking sun;
It creeps upon me when the day is done;
It hammers at my heart the long night through—
   This want of you.  

It sighs within me with the misting skies;
Oh, all the day within my heart it cries,
Old as your absence, yet each moment new—  
   This want of you.  

Mad with demand and aching with despair,
It leaps within my heart and you are—where?
God has forgotten, or he never knew—
   This want of you.”

“He jumped off the box-car
In Eastbourne, the beast born
In him was too hungry to hide;

His neck in grief’s grommet,
He groaned through his vomit
At the churn
And the yearn
At the turn of the tide.

He headed him soon
For a sad-lit saloon
In back of the edge of the strand,
Where a man almost ended
Sat down and extended

His speckled,
Blue-knuckled
And cuckolded
Hand.

Cried, The wind broke my marriage in two.
Clean through the bones of it,
Christ how it blew!
I got no tomorrow
And sorrow
Is tough to rescind:
So forgive me if I should break wind, son,
Forgive me
If I should break wind.

At this the bartender
Addressed the agenda,
A dish-cloth kept dabbing his eye,
Said, Pardon intrusion
Upon your effusion
Of loss but none wooed it
Or rued it
As I.

For after the eve of Yvonne,
My God, how it hurts now the woman has gone!
Heart-sick as a dog,
I roll on like a log
Down the roaring black river
Where once sailed
A swan.

Then the dog on the floor,
Who’d not spoken before,
Growled, Ain’t it the truth you guys said?
I may be a son-
Of-a-bitch but that bitch

Was my Sun
And she dumped me,
The bitch did,
For dead.

So three lonely guys in the night and a hound
Drank up, and they headed them out to the Sound,
Threw up, then they threw themselves
In and they
Drowned.

O dee-o-dayee…
O dee-o-dayee…
Woe-woe-dalayee…”