Civilization

 Send your army home to their wives and children.

It is late.
 Your soldiers are burdened, thirsty.

Lock the doors, the windows, and here in darkness
 lie down beside me.


Speak of anything we possess in common:
ground or law or sense.
 Only speak it softly.

Spiders crawl the crevices.
 Violent voices
 ruin their balance,

and they’ll fall – intuit – upon our faces,
where I fear them most.
 But you’ve heard this terror,
and my midnight phobias always move you –
 cause to remain here.


Leave a light still burning, in some far wall sconce.

Tuck one rebel end of the flat sheet under.

Turn away, self-ruled, to remind me even
 Sappho was mortal,

even Shakespeare, writing of cups and spiders
in his winter’s tale.
 Send your tin men home, then.

Once I asked your reason to stay.
 You said,
 “Because you’re still with me.
”

Biography | Poems | Best Poems | Short Poems | Quotes | Email Poem |

Poems are below...