You don't need a parable to grab you
by the leg to know your aren't getting away
with it, not this time, not nohow. And if
black crow feathers are sprouting
from your mouth that doesn't mean
you've been chewing, though it does mean
the song you played last night
on the jukebox will rattle around
in your head until you give up
goddammit and fall in love,
which doesn't help, not never,
not even when you're shitfaced
and just ralphed on the barmaid's blouse.
The only choice is to snip off a lock
of your own hair and then bury it,
then not to bathe for seven days,
and then to fast for forty hours,
and then to whip yourself on your own
sorry ass, which won't feel it because
you don't have the heart, and never did,
and don't care, which even the barmaid sensed
when you started dabbing at her chest
with the crow feathers.