Twenty Love Poems: 14

In the garden of love they’ll find
two hearts in the compost pile
yours and mine entwined in trust
tattered threads of truce
and an ancient calloused shell
from which slip cynical slugs
of smug self-satisfaction.

Good tho to hear from you
proud of your retirement
package that left you free to
travel world round and round
dressed in tutu and tulle
we can’t stop for death here
the corrosive calls of life

cloned days drown even your
braggart arguments snobbish
burlesque lycanthropy under
the moon’s smog we must
move on ahead of the wolf
not of metaphor but the one
in our own backyard garden.