Advice to the Love Worn

John Yau

Welcome to tonight’s special installment

The one and lonely

Babylonian Baloney

Soap Opera

Coming to you

Live and on fire
 

O Sumerian high spot

Your recent spout

Got me head-locked

In crackup mode
 

But this storm of machine display huffing

Is a prize

No one would drink of administering

To a vacated mannequin

Much less shovel inside totem

Tattooed with outline of extinct blue aphrodisiac
 

Maybe you should rethink your objectives

Based on remaining tent stakes

Holding down last reality flaps
 

Perhaps you should pen a confessional poem

In which one of you is afflicted (or conflicted?) 

With gobs of properly vetted sorrow

While the other (the Other!) hugs

Latest example of imported dignity 
 

Call it the human equation factor

And add Lachrymose

(Not, lack remorse)

To your vocabulary of hot spots
 

You too have learned to bake

Unfortunate omissions

Into an admirable lie

Build towering wet rind

Plastered with gold stars and wolf whistles
 

In the meantime, however, you should

Practice your composure

Adjust your public valve release,

Check on inner corpse

Bobbing convulsively

In far and foreign corners
 

 

Remember

Exercises in patience

Are a controlled form

Of delayed gratification

For the greater good