black & white love poem (1977)

you spent years
learning to hate yourself.
now let me love you for just a
while
before you go away to appear in
modern movies.

(i love your amber eyes
your tough, vaudevillian stance
your hands left over from some
Celtic romance)

i see you in sequel
playing punk to mirror
seeking black eye from magician
smile from sniper
disapproval from someone
cold, hard
like your father.

(i love to see you laugh)

in the last reel
i see your mobile back
black-jacketed
heading for the door.

(my love a useless, lacy thing
discarded on the floor)