My Soul in Search of Divine Romance

My Soul in Search of Divine Romance

I looked in the river & the river just kept rolling on out to the sea.
I looked in the ocean & the ocean was just too big to see across.
I looked in your eyes & saw nothing but the blues.  I looked in the sky
& the stars got caught in my corneas.  I looked in a book
& the words just snaked across the page. I looked in men’s hearts
& saw bottomless pits of darkness. I listened to the wind 
& heard not one word that sounded like a lover’s confession, 

so I listened to music pounded out on a piano, flowing out of a guitar 
& men’s throats & women’s throats & found no lovers. 
I listened to liars who made love as useful as a moth-eaten sweater,
whose affection was just slick, swollen sticks of flesh 
& I pushed & sucked until I realized this is not love, this is friction.

I stop listening today, now I will wait.
Only You know how to love me
but I don’t yet know how to understand—
the mud of this world sticks to my thighs
& the slime of lovers who have tricked me
for over half a century—

but today I renounce it all—
I will no longer look for You
in the disappointing automatons 
who inhabit this world.
I will not listen to the tacky voices 
that pollute the hallways of my ears.
Let them all grab & squabble & grow fat & drunk 
on the blood of desire. 

I renounce it all—
I cut out my eyeballs,
& hack my eardrums to pieces, & flay my skin,
& chop out my tongue, & snuffle my nose,
because my soul has no need to carry such baggage 
traveling in search of Divine Romance.