By Erica Naone (LadyFebruary@yahoo.com)
Date: 16 July 1999

To Forget

alternate title: This Poem Should Be Burned

The perfect order of animals:
Lying drunk in the grass, a moan and a push
Tearing out grass in an impression of myself
Asking questions only grass can answer
Sun bakes grass to green for our faces
Night grass just black and empty sin with no seed

The perfect order of animals:
No higher than animals, a low water mark in cigarette butts
Find me tobacco to kill the animals in me, to kill the kisses
Animals are secrets, having no words
Look in my bones for the animal I am
When I am gone, the animal remains

The perfect order of animals:
You want my regrets then drown them.
There must be no regrets.  You turn my knees to earth.
I fight my way up, breathing smoke from my broken mouth to yours.  Regret
This, it's a lonely place where my back regrets the touch of your shirt.
Regret marks your knuckles.  I hear them crack from here.

The perfect order of animals:
I water this useless garden with a clear mind.
You said we could fuck by the water and no one would know 
The difference.  Except ourselves.  The water went unchanged.
I drink water until I'm sick to clear my thirst for you.
Spilled water ruined our cigarettes, we stepped outside and began.

The perfect order of animals:
Give me back my human status: I am not the epitome of
Sex.  Give me back my human status: my hands are my
Only friends.  Give me back my human status: I don't
Know your smells.  I am foolish like a human.
Give me back my human status: I need to change my clothes.