body

from "marriage" by gregory corso

"O but what about love? I forget love
not that I am incapable of love
it's just that I see love as odd as wearing shoes--
I never wanted to marry a girl who was like my mother
And Ingrid Bergman was always impossible
And there maybe a girl now but she's already married
And I don't like men and--
but there's got to be somebody!
Because what if I'm 60 years old and not married,
all alone in furnished room with pee stains on my underwear
and everybody else is married! All in the universe married but me!

Ah, yet well I know that were a woman possible as I am possible
then marriage would be possible--
Like SHE in her lonely alien gaud waiting her Egyptian lover
so I wait--bereft of 2,000 years and the bath of life."

don't ask me to marry you.
ask me to love you.
because it's that paper that ends things,
not absence of love nor other lovers
nor children nor age.
it's that paper.
don't ask me to live with you.
ask me to die with you.
because it's not the years
not the wrinkles or sickness
or time that will seperate.
hell, don't ask me anything.
just say "please, love,
do what you've been doing thus far,
and keep doing it so long as you like"