The old self
like a dybbuk
clutching at my heel.
She wants to come back.
She is digging
her long red nails
into the tender meat of my thighs…
She tweaks my clit,
hoping that my sexaholic self
will surface
and take me back, back, back
to the land of fuck,
where, crazed with lust
I come over and over again,
going nowhere.
The old self
does not like
her displacement.
She resents the new tenant
sprucing up
her disorderly house.
She resents
the calm woman
nourishing her roses,
her daughter, her dogs,
her poems, her passionate
friendships.
She wants chaos
and angst and Liebestod.
She claims
she can’t write
without them.
But the new tenant
is wise to her tricks.
Disorder is not poetry,
she says. Pain
is not love.
Love flowers; love gives
without taking;
love is serene
and calm.
I talk to the dybbuk:
My darling dybbuk,
I will love you
into submission.
Tweak me, I will only
caress you.
Claw me, I will only
kiss you back.
For what I have learned
lets me love
even my demon.
Demon—I love you
for you are
mine,
I say.
And demons die
of love.