Love Drunk
for D'Anthra. B. Adderley

if I were to die of loving you too much
were I to spend it all on love- spend it all for love
spend my life all at once or too fast
too much at once

like a bottle of alcohol, rum or gin,
brandy or whiskey, put to the head
and gug-a-lug until it was all in your belly
burning and the bottle was filled
with the smell of what was in it and full of air

empty me to do away with, to dispose of
after having loved you to death
to death meaning that I died
and you were left to cry; with eyes to dry
would that be poetry

this country is not the same
the world is changed
by your love for me
by my love for you

living to love you, nothing as important
nothing else important

the persons closest to me
not at all as close to me as you are

I take in air and you in one same effort
air so close, so vital to us, we breathing
no matter where we are or who we're with

with you it is like this, you inside me like air

on the phone with you just now
wondering if I would drink your pee
and if I did, would I live- would I be well
might I catch what I didn't want- what I might regret

but already I've declared
don't mind dying for love of you

for anything- for anyone else, I might complain
reject, resist, but to spend my life like sixpence
on something and get no change, I'd do it readily

only my wish is to be around
my wish is to be loving you over the course
of a hundred or more years

that might be why
all the poems of us- of our affair
so that it could outlast the love
of Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde,
Alexander and Cleopatra,
Othello and Desdemona

Clytemnestra- to whom was she attached
and in what play- by what Greek playwright


© Obediah Michael Smith, 2012
12:41 p.m. 01.09.12