Which is how you know
that men are still children;
the woman has opened
herself like a picture book
(the flesh's bedtime story
of a child lost in the wood)
and the men will complain
about the deadness
in the eyes, or the drowned
expression; like, when
did men watch porn
to see women's faces?
And the answer is,
from the very beginning,
because men are still children
and, if after crying and pointing
they get the toy on the low shelf
it's the toy on the high shelf they need,
and will complain if they can't have--the
new toy,
the toy not for playing,
the toy with the slave's eyes, the toy
they wouldn't know where to begin with.
But the high toy is held by the woman
for her own grasping child,
alone now at home
staring at the corner of the toybox,
or perhaps just for herself
her own eyes and her own face;
perhaps,then she saves them
for still another child
the child that she was,
(like the child in the story,
lost now in the wood.)
--June 11, 2000