for Coleen Grissom

Don’t bare your soul to anyone, however gentle,
_     _solicitous, seductive, or wise!
Don’t do it! Don’t
_     _make that mistake!
Don’t bare your soul, and leave it to be scarified
_     _like a Formica-topped table!
Greasy and wrinkled like an old dollar bill!
Blown like dirty confetti along the pavement!

Remember the long letter you wrote in anguish and self-
_     _laceration, out of conscience unsparing as a steel
_     _comb, up half the night head packed in pain,
_     _and no answer ever came! None!
And the book inscribed IN DEEPEST LOVE you saw tossed
_     _amid family trash in the rear of a Honda hatchback,
_     _with that melancholy look of a book never once
_     _opened! And why should it have been opened,
_     _your soul so yearning and bared?

And the long dreamy talk you once had, hand folded
_     _into hand, feet clasping feet for warmth, pulse-
_     _beats in equilibrium as, at dusk, as dusk deepens,
_     _the interior darkness expands to meet the exterior,
_     and there is a breathless moment when both are equal—
_     that came to nothing in the end—as you should
_     _have known!

So don’t bare your soul in intimacy, still less
_     _in company!
Don’t do it! Don’t
_     _make that mistake!
Don’t bless while being cursed!
Remember that Hell is memory with no power of alteration;
_     _remorse that is one-sided merely; shame a mirror
_     _showing only your face.
Don’t bare your soul to anyone, no matter who invites it!
No matter who whispers, I will love you forever—tell me
_     _all your secrets!
Don’t do it!
_     _And if you do it, don’t talk about it!
Not even to yourself!
And don’t write about it!
_     _Especially not that!