Men drive us to suicide,
children pull us back.
I'd have more
If it weren't too late.
Where fertility ends,
futility begins--
gains now gone
in the ecstatic giveaway.
Lying in birth, lying with lovers:
good empty;
the creative lay has become
the sterile lie,
the me I still hold onto
and haven't yet grown into.
Somedays I look at it differently:
emptiness
as the fertile void
potent, swirling, about to
riff again.