My Love Is Too Much - Vanessa Daou

My love is too much-

It embarrasses you-

Blood, poems, babies

Red needs that telephone

From foreign countries

Black needs that spatter

The pages

Of your white papery heart

You would rather have a girl

With simpler needs:

Lunch, sex, undemanding

Loving

Dinner, wine, bed

The occasional blow-job

& needs that are never

Red as gaping wounds

But cool & blue

As television screens

In tract houses

Oh my love

Those simple girls

With simple needs

Read my books too

They tell me they feel

The same as I do

They tell me I transcribe

The language of their hearts

They tell me I translate

Their mute, unspoken pain

Into the white light

Of language

Oh love

No love

Is ever wholly undemanding

It can pretend coolness

Until the pain comes

Until the first baby comes

Howling her own infant need

Into a universe

That never summoned her

The love you seek

Cannot be found

Except in the white pages

Of recipe books

It is cooking you seek

Not love

Cooking with sex coming after

Cool sex

That speaks to the penis alone

& not the howling chaos

Of the heart