"Sex/ART/Love/DEATH

BABY

I landed with a thud, right at your feet.
Never felt so...leavened...so...level-headed, yet:
This was Paradise! I stared up at you with unblinking eyes.
Never did that before.
Never let a man keep my gaze for long. (It's a pride thing.)

I found your poems today, the new ones from 2006.
Laundry list of stuff...funny...had me quite amused.
Then between "Tatoos On The Windows" and "Forty-one minutes left"

The words.

"What is Cutz doing"
Note: no q. mark no punctuation at all in this column of your butterfly hand.

Heart frozen. He rarely wrote about me directly just took notes about trips
books movies cutzy wants to see that horrible mexican film about the killer couple
not sure I'm up for it a third time. She can go by herself."
"What's your social again?" "Do you want me to bring
these bags upstairs Princess, or do you just wanna shoot me?
I am not your mule!" Takes out pen. Writes: never be CutZy's mule again.

Oh, yes you are, I shout back, get no answer. Smile.
Deign to pick up my LV knockoff, relieving him of cash and jewels
Just in case we meet somebody new not him.

Jeff Bridges.
Sam Shepard.
Ed Harris,
Clint Eastwood
Michael Fassbender
Viggo Mortenson
Aaron Eckhart

You were always a movie star.
Remember when the girls at the Santa Fe Flea Market thought you were Jeff?
Remember how I said "I told you so!" and you, the most un-vain man I've ever met
                     said "Oh, honey, you're just saying that because..."

hesitation.
Cause I'm in love with you?
Yeah.
Oh.
Is that so bad?

I found your poems today and read so many funny lines.
I could repeat them here but don't want to steal your material, my darling.
Let's just say when I saw the next WORDS march across the small yellow legal pad
                     my heart did a backflip and you know, baby, how I love to dive.

"I love you, CutZy."

Echos of that damned day replay in my mind again and again.

Why is it they always suggest you join a grief group?
Why don't they just teach you how to be a suicide bomber?

No, I need post-dramatic stress therapy.  That's right. Dramatic.

Death is uber-dramatic.  Comes right in and swish!

My baby's gone.

There's no escaping it. There's no use denying or even enshrining it
(Is that what I'm doing here? Am I playing the sentimental widow's card, baby?)
If so - who cares?
Only I care
                       we knew that along.

Being artists was the best part of all.  We saw the same way...
We drew the world, we painted and assembled it.
We wrote about it, loved it, hated it and loved and...but no...never, ever hated
We loved, mostly
(Were occasionally annoyed or disappointed never could stay mad for long).
As Ken said, we were puppy dogs never grown up.

Still you managed to write stuff and so did I.
This was our one sense of responsibility.
And sculpture and any other art that took us out
Made us focus on something other than the world and even each other.
We knew we were wild. We knew we were meant only to be free.
Happy now, darling? Free of mel

"Never enough" is the book you dedicated "To CutZy McCall With Undying Devotion."
(Feels like a heavy mantel, baby. A bit of burden, wouldn't you say? So baroque.)
It's still here, baby. Waiting to be sent to Carol .
Catalogue of soulless things people do to survive. You named names.
You made me proud with that one, baby.

But

When I saw

"I love you, CutZy" small banner, butterfly wings waving at me soulfully

You see

I thought I was getting happy again,  the thinking of what I might be doing
and then that LOVE
took back
                             your shoulders, your arms, your beautiful, beautiful eyes.

I can never love again. I'll say it publicly. I'll say it true.

It's a life Emily Dickinson for me, my darling.

We'll just keep contact through poetry. I know there's a lot more for me to find.
I won't be happy like normal people.
But who cares? I'll be in Paradise,
With you.