I am lonely finding my language

only understood by the boring half of the world,

the half that cries when their sons are beaten.

Sweet guilty, you, Pièta slinking from Mary’s

lap to the scourge again.

Excuse me, I said to the lion.

Thumbs down on the third date.

If there was a word that made treaty with teeth

that suspended the whip’s blood in the air like roses

that unfurled soft tongues from the gladiator’s spear

what a nice world for poets and little girls.

I was never not guilty but I was always innocent,

if innocence means wearing too many flowers.