Morally she can’t stand him,
But she had to have a cigarette when she saw him smoke.
Consciousness builds walls. The sleeping brain is woke.
The physical is moral—but no one told her this.
The moral is not: “not kissing.” The moral is who you kiss,
And you kiss what the physical wants.
Her love is tortured severely
By these physical dreams, these physical taunts,
By the fact everything is physical:
Sunlight and the ether, everything beautiful
Is physical. The whole study of morals is contained
In the physically ugly. The physically ugly is moral.
Groceries and poems at the store. Oh, and don’t forget the laurel.
Things crowd out the moon until the moral has no where to go.
The night remains unseen. Her sense of things orbits things
Impossible to know.
To never know! To never know!
The heated ether, the wavering atmosphere, the fading glow.
Sleep and love, feeling their way between deep, dark summer rains.
Morals made her moral. But the physical, in the thump of her heart, remains.
She might love again, but how long, how long?
She switches on the television. Her best friend says she is strong.