Monday Poems: "True Love" -- by Barry Gifford

Your sickness made me
a little sick, it's
true—-I still
feel it
     Mayakovsky got down
          on his knees
     and declared
               his love
to his last 
          mistress
        a few hours after
           he'd met her
Remember me 
at the hotel
            in Paris,
         on my knees
            in the lift?
We're all the same
men of too much passion
and a little talent—-
    some a little more
                  than others
    We fool ourselves
       into thinking
                  we're strong
           then complain
      the rest of our lives
          crippled by
            the consequences

*     *     *     *     *

Barry Gifford is a novelist, librettist, screenwriter and poet who lives in the San Francisco Bay area. His work has been translated into twenty-eight languages and has received awards from the PEN Center, the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Library Association, the Writers Guild of America, and the Christopher Isherwood Foundation. His novel Wild at Heart was made into a film by David Lynch; the film won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1990. 
His novels include The Phantom Father, named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; and Wyoming, named a Los Angeles Times Novel of the Year. His most recent poetry collection, Imagining Paradise, comes out in 2012.