THE PICNIC GROVE OF PARADISE


I'm done with fastidious Capricorn
women who make love on fur coats
they spread across cold basement floors
without taking off their watches.

Maybe done with idealistic
Pisceans who stay for years before
they swim away from a bad prospect.
I have a collection of their towels.

Done with that Libran who never wrote
letters, but sent snapshots from Paris,
where she posed with flowers & funny hats
for a lover who held the camera.

I'm through with hats. Please discern how
this poem is profoundly bare-headed.
Hats raise pimples on my poet's brow
& ought to be left to drunken novelists.

I'm finished with food metaphors.
No more smearing honey on the moon
or the sweet scent of ripened peaches
in the green picnic grove of paradise.

It's infested with bees & mosquitoes,
squirrels, ants, hornets, spiders & beetles.
Poet, believe no promise of paradise
the next time a goddess sees you naked.