I wasn't good enough for a lot of them.
Louisville whiskey helps me to realize:

I've been reading too much Jung,
archetypes and Swiss arrogance.

Shut off the aching gold-painted lamp
tonight. Throw old poems into the fireplace.

The Swiss doctor must have laughed to
himself at his polyamorous propensities.

He argued for the real existence of evil
against the Church Fathers.

The long pages tell me there must be a
symbol, an idea of mythic woman,

a gas-eyed stranger in a dark coat
somewhere in the shed of my mind.

I wasn't good enough for the one
from Brooklyn, too narcistically kind.

That was back in college before my jaw
roughened up and I could grow a beard.

How many times did a Boston-dressed,
slow-laughing woman stand in for love?

Or was it the kindness of the Midwest
accent? Or was it the reality of blue eyes?

Like when I was in high school and
didn't know how to talk to anyone.

A Man and His Symbols. We divorce
our faces again and again

Because God knows what of myself
I find in you.

Jung in his tall German frame adjusts
his dainty spectacles, chops wood by the lake.

I'm too good to move from this room,
not good enough for breathing in life.

Not good enough to stand in for what
might be missing.

The inner dance of perception burrows
within my ribs: the moonlight peeks in

From the window, the porch light perches
vaguely against the clouds and dark bushes.

I found something that was enough
in eyes-shut daydreaming at midnight.

The bottle from Louisville slowly
runs dry, and I am tired.

I laugh at my own sad, polyamorous
weaknesses: only a woman can make

me speak, and I am always fumbling
over the right words.