Lawrence Meets Hemingway

you, with your mighty gun.
you, who spoke women to a shadow.
who are you to greet me now?
i know snakes mightier than you.
you only know death, death, death,
and i've had enough of that.
your cuban hand sleeps on the page.
my phoenix is mightier than your bull.
don't waste my time with your ghosts,
i've got a black sun waiting.
you'll wake up amoung the magpies.
you'll be an old elephant
in a forlorn circus.
you'll be shadows stretched across Idaho.
you, with your mighty gun.
you'll be the saint's tears in the August sky.
i become restless watching you.
i grow weary listening to you describe
your great unfinished sculptures.
i am a refugee in your dark jungles,
your mountains, your corn prairies.
i do not envy your ambulance.
i do not envy your mighty gun.

you do not know your fish;
it slips between your page & your pen.
it is because you want to know your fish,
because you want to make it more
than the hot life that flows with the water,
that the fish swims away from you.

it is because the mountains will not bow down
that you seek to seize them.
because the bulls are a restless army
that you seek to overpower them.

Do not come to me with your restless ghosts
until you can love the woman laying beside you.