Otherwise they Go Unsung
Black Tulip in Love

Sometimes a simile
Finds her vehicle before tenor
(An opera singer in a corvette)
And she’s off and running like
A race horse on amphetamines
Like amphetamines on a race horse
Like this is speed with hooves
And spark, his leaving and her insides
Race around the small plastic track
like a matchbox car with a rocket-engine
like it’s a marvelous night for a moondance
and your ringtone should be emerald-cut.
She is just now inside herself, wondering,
Wandering like a child lost in a mall
Or a grown-she lost in the parking terrace
At the airport, walking level four for miles
Certain, so certain, that was where she left
The car, then recalling no, his favorite number
And the car, parking neatly on three
Waited under her preferred digit.
Because he’s leaving, the city’s gold light
Seems jaundiced, a tarnished star
Where sunlight coated the newly-planted
Tomatoes, the basil and mint arching
Towards his reach. His, a gardner’s patience,
Her’s a love for the gardener and so, for the plants,
She will tend them like preemies,
And today, someone’s birthday shivers
in the parking space of the calenders
everywhere, stretched out on walls,
sprawled on desks, tucked into
cell phones and wallets, the days
splayed out like soft porn.
In the black tulip of her heart,
he reigns and he is wanted,
she cries out and he returns.
They free the small yellow
Airplane from the décor,
Fly it out--straight out
The westerly windows of the airport
And into the sunset of the best
Of their lives. For a water landing
An inflateable slide down into
Clean, folded laundry,
excellent coffee, for drowning
One calls out throw me a lifetime
and the other never fails to comply.