i am a boat

and sail your empty

ocean

my Argo’s artless cargo

the crippled minutes

that remember us

dismembering the heavens

and pinning memories

liked butterflies

to the night

your father’s star

shone on

we are nothing

but everything fills us;

foolish flowers growing

through the snow, vampires

and pesticides, foeti

and decay, barbells

and hell, smelly

as life, or the wintering

that listen

tonight

what shall be the memory

you nail there

in your darkness

when my memory

is gone?

the tongue and the coming

and the dead man’s

blessing?

what shall linger on

when every gorged orgasm is

forgotten?

love’s aggravating Argo

by david mclean

David McLean has published poems in about 125 zines over the past year or so. He has a chapbook called “a taste for mourning” out before Xmas 2007 at www.erbacce.com which is a perfect prezzy for your local pastor, priest, or psychiatrist.