I have not showered since Tuesday

and

I don’t know if I will forget
Because I didn’t remember to forgive you.
The sunlight and leaves and ether,
The summertime reddish dust
And the scent of memories
Have already marked me in that short time.
And I didn’t want to tell you anyway
That I have not showered since Tuesday-
Lest you forgive me as clean, but remember me as dirty.

It is midnight and I know that
You will not sleep. You will think of me.
Do not ask me how I know this,
Because then you might judge me
On the fact that
I have not showered since Tuesday.

The remembrance has filled up
Beneath my fingernails, blackening like moss.
My hair has become tangled with
The wild, glorious lack of order
Within my feathered head.

We only know each other relative to ourselves-
Lost in a surging sea of similes
Am I- can you help me, possibly?
You know I don’t tell anyone these things.
You are the closest inside my head
And the only one who knows
That I have not showered since Tuesday.

Poems for the joy of poetry.
Singing for the love of song-
Seek out my pinkening heels and the nape of my neck
And drink in that enduring enchantment
That entreats you to curl a strand of my hair around your finger;
But please, don’t touch me,
For I have not showered since Tuesday.

Would it even matter to you that
I was so unclean?
I am inspired by our very biology-
Let alone the fact that the atoms
From which my thoughts are made
Were once part of swirling nebulae
Or William Shakespeare.

Now do you understand
Why I would never marry an intellectual?
The love of books would consume me from cleaning
And we would live in perpetual filth.

You would know that I have a coloured mind.

Keep up with me all the way up-
Look at the stars, and know that
This is what we are.
This is what I am-
But I am afraid I must tell you
That I have not showered since Tuesday.