What am I to do

When the guns come marching by

In their hollow faces and rickety skin

With fingers of iron and tongues of fire,

Barrel at your nose, backed against the wall,

And no mercy paints their eyes,

No mercy for you, at least.

Mercy of a deranged battered soldier

At the end of a barstool
Heaving.

What am I to do

When instead of scrambling from the scene

Out the door of dripping sky shrieks

Your nose tips up and your grin roars?

What then, dear? What can I do

When your heart doesn’t thump, it taps?

When your soul cuts out your terror

And replaces it with anticipation?

Because what do you love more

Than mister and misses bullets

Whizzing through the ocean air?

Those bullets flying straight into you.

What am I to do

When my passion waltzes about the cavern,

Crystal throat poised like a spearhead,

But you refuse to dance with him?

His purpose-- it has none,

Yet you wrap your arms around his waist

And it burns like a summer sorrow;

Like Love herself has stolen his dexterity.

His grace and his beauty, gone.

Why won’t you dance, dear?

What have I done to deserve the acceptance at gunpoint

And the red twine wrapped around your wrists

And the refusal to take the hands of Passion--

My hands?

 

What am I to do?