Love Poems
by Blake Percy

Supplication

When you pray,
shut the door.
When you drink,
shut the light.
You have a few
when you come to a bar,
because
when you pay $3.50 for a beer,
you are not paying to drink.
You are paying for atmosphere.
But if you want to drink,
do not tell your loved ones,
[. . .]
Do not tell your friends.
They will want to see you
dance on tables
and make an ass of yourself,
so that their drunkenness
might be repaid.
Instead,
retreat to your room
drink from your bottle in secret.
Do not let your heart
know what your liver is doing.
Your bottle will repay you
twice over
in person.
You will babble like a pagan
in horror at the Christ-child
or whatever it is
you people do
in the darkness of your hearts.
When you wake up in the morning,
if you have drunk like you should,
you will wipe the crust
out of your eyes
and repent
for all of your sins.


My Will

When I leave you, and you know I will
(but this’ll happen only when I die),
you want to know what I’ll leave you.
You want to know in time what I’ll leave her.
A good game to start,
by its start [. . .]
nothing is ever [. . .]
as long as we say that it isn’t.
I leave to her my feet, that was how I wandered to her,
in the end they stink,
and to you I leave my head,
the crown of everything I’ve ever known.
Then she gets my knees, which wobble,
then you get my shoulders,
stiff enough to be mistook for strong.
To cap it off, she gets my dick
(no great loss, you say)
and in return you get my heart
(very sweet, you say).
Divvied up and handed out, I go to sleep,
and in my dreams you watch me sleep until
you say, “You left her your dick!”
It troubles you.
I may have given you my soul,
but I gave her my will.


Dear

Armies know all their wrecks,
drawn in print, dragged through fire
steadfast with the cursing
for the wrecked winter, the long way home
and the soft peddlers
saving themselves in place of better men,
but they will go away, and so will this.
Battered, wet, any death
is never so sore as your own,
that holds you prepared for
the kicked-down door. Nothing good will
ever come of a soldier’s forced entry,
but he’ll get off, and so will I.
We know that many minor glances
build past all forgotten goods
so that we lose our sleep for love,
but we wake up, and so will you.
We’ve heard of those who sign and lead,
the ready and the wolves,
holding their city for all its worth.
Sitting after the long way home, many
wait for their land, their ass
to be turned into an airport.
The planes will fly away.
He sits in grief, sore and tired of caring
in the dark. He says to himself
the endless life will never end.
Maybe he should remember instead
that fate carries a hammer.
It builds his house and smashes his head,
but when you looked at me to say to me
what does this have to do with me . . .
I am your singer.
I’m dear to you. Hell, you call me Dear.
But then you’ll get bored, abandon me,
your loyal lips,
for a better speaker, and he will be
where I had been.
That will go away, and so will she.


Gone and Free

She trailed her luggage through the street
to the train and on the train,
and whenever she’d meet someone whose face she liked,
she’d tell the maybe-him or maybe-her
about the piece of baggage she had left behind.
“You see me,” she said,
“all my bags.
I look like a fool. I look like a fool.
But there’s a piece of baggage
I left behind
big baggage I left behind
my husband
husband of ten years, ten years and 350 pounds.
When I got out of jail
after 28 days, 28 bullshit days
there weren’t any drugs, no drugs on me,
only a fifth
of wine,
but after 28 days
he’s let the children go
the DCFS takes my kids away
and he puts me down.
I wanna hurt myself, I say to him I wanna hurt myself.
He told me to take it outside
if I were gonna hurt myself.
Don’t bloody my apartment
if you’re gonna hurt yourself.
So now I’m outside, outside and gone,
gone and free,
free and gone.”
She throws her hands up in the air, maniacal and free,
says sorry to the listener, but she just feels so free
she has to say something, she has to know she’s free.
She stares off into nothing, where the subway tracks converge into nothing,
because
[. . .]
She stares off into nothing
and knows she’s gone and free.
Free and gone.