shit, I write, is all we are. society
a cesspool and each a turd swimming in
miasmas of piss and tears . . . very good,
says the ghost over my shoulder. this too
is a poem of love. love? I spit. how
a poem of love? such bitterness, says she,
could grow from no other seed. love, I write,
is a bitch ready to bite her owner
for having touched the runt pup mid-suckle.
yes, says my ghost, now you confess to all
absence of knowledge, knowing nothing of love
save perhaps what some poetic boy wrote
five hundred years ago in a book of sonnets,
or perhaps bitter is all you know of love?

dmpitchford