Snow for Neon                                               

After reading an essay about Lynda Hull that sizzled
like a welder’s arc,
I wrote a poem
about Lynda’s wig & syringe,
the El that ran across
her window
in an old hotel
where she kept repeating:
It was never warm enough.w
My poem reeked—
All spiced-up & goofy
with language,
adjectives pushed into lines
like someone forcing
a boy into an X-rated movie house.
I’d written poems for her before—
snowflakes on
a neon sign. The long red wire of Lynda-love sparked
but never had much
heart to fire up. Soul-dead
& cold, I couldn’t see
my breath in those poems.
Too much Wow! in my
faux cut wrist, and
as far away from blood
as Newark is from
Florida’s grass
not cut for weeks,
white ibis stalking ground
to stab lizards. Dear Lynda,
your black orchids slit my heart
with cursive silk,
but every poem I
tried to write for you
ran its tongue along the edge of a winter’s blade.