12 of 30, 2015

Poem for the Divorce Petitioner Who Claimed His Wife Cheated on him with the Entire Wu-Tang Clan

It's that wedding ring shit; the legend
will mask it. In Shaolin, the peasant tools--
spade, scythe, calloused palm--were boiled
down with discipline to even the footing

on lawless roads. The bandit hears the rumors
and now every peasant, every aged farmer
becomes nameless threat. The genius
of envy is like this: you fear the worst

because the worst is possible and deadly quick.
The Clan is fractal, any man, all men. The razor
says believe half of what you see, and none
of what you hear, but nothing can be

so simple. Even the heart has four chambers.
If she's stopped loving you, she must love
the whole world beside. This is the point
in the oldest dirty stories where the hero

goes mad, Gilgamesh staggering the wild
in skins, Cuchulain fighting the ceaseless
tide. If you could name this grief after love
you would be a monk again: cool, alone,

no mind, but for a while it sews you shut
and just keeps feeding you.