the blue crane

there are times i wish
you weren't so literal.
when you didn't
become the coroner,
the forensic doctor
and slice into your flesh
and dig around for it

for the words, the poems,
the entrails of phrases
and make them seem
such a hopeless lot.
the type you would
sign off deaths,
with a definitive
'yeah this one
was never saveable'

and i wonder why
you even want a woman
or remember the one
who took your insides
and stitched them to hers,
while telling you lies
about how it hurt her eyes
to read your words,
why you even needed
to write a poem
about her
or two or three

or why it takes you
more than three times
as long as anyone
to work out you are
still breathing and
still walking like a
blue crane does,
stumbling through
the waterlilies in africa.
how you don't care,
you've never cared for
why the children die
and why divorce is
made more for women
as if the man is always wrong.
the reasons you look to fight
when even the biggest guy
doesn't want to raise his fist,
not because he doesn't care;
because to fight you
is to prove it all correct,
that you are right
and no one has any
redeeming value

it's a love of
saving creatures,
of wading in to mud
a thousand mile deep,
plunging hands in
to see if anything
can be pulled to the surface
and i don't want to be
visiting you next year
right beside Bukowski
who said 'don't try'
and yours which will say

'thanks
i didn't'