Last evening
sharp-snipping scissors cut my hair

and white cream squeezed from a nozzled
tube in a box turned
my locks
black

and tonight I have strange thoughts
about love
like ash
stirred in a bronze dish with
the stub of my pen


when I wore
a patterned silk kimono
smelling of
patchouli oil
and moved inside the slight
ghost of my long-haired youth

after the lover’s cigarette
I slept
on newly-warmed
white wedding-bed-sheets
then you were green too weighty in-
between my tender thighs