False Spring (I)

Over-soaked season

dark with drenching

cold-cocking lambs and baby chicks

 

you set me up, a scam:

I’m Gullible, you’re Gut Punch

 

pink and purple as a bruise,

all blossom-addled, scattered

system of give and take away

 

oh, but the green, believers say

pray their seeds aren’t washed astray

like sins, surgeons of root rot and sog

 

I think, Spring, you’re an asshole

pretending you’re a princess—

you weep that darkness is a curse

but you roll around in all this rain

 

a witch

 

I’m over it

 

I won’t dance this life dance to death

no matter what red-plum ballet shoes

you branch across my feet,

while you chant

 

Wet with leaf-slick lying

Wet with mud-mad dying

 

Wet as litters scooted out in globs

Wet as trees mushrooming nobs

 

Wet in slatternly mulch

and sloppy growth

 

Wet in labial flower beds

promiscuous without an oath

​

I hate you when you wink and walk away

flash your flowering underskirt

feed me grape hyacinths

expecting me to spit out mud

 

I won’t grope in grass half-frozen

forever scouting shoots

 

Give it up, you bitch

We’re insane now

and not afraid to snap