Why do I let you scare
and annoy me
as if this were not the age of pineapples,
as if I were not the pineapple flesh?
Why does a plane knock over a tower,
why do a hundred pinky fingers
manage to lift my heavy old body?

Why do I let you ugly hearted people
tell me what I am not?
Why do I let you lie to me like that?
Why do we all do this--
since every act of unasked telling
is an act of force, and we,
the pineapples,
advertised to and taught,
bred in our particular stems,
have sat like stupid Ghandis,
war paint forgotten in the toybox?

Why don't I go right ahead.
Build my two room shack of mud and bamboo.
Live my life with more than just a flicker.
Be a bright citron in arcadia.
Watch my arms rumple in the sun
[pocked with toothmark scars from when
I bit my arm to stop thinking about you]
as years go by, till finally,
they drop off like old zucchinis.
Why not, when you have scared me like this,
when you have come inside me
and I have been wrecked by it,
stop thinking about the wreckage
the accident of your life
and start thinking about how much water
the tomatoes need
if I am going to be able to eat.

I'm as old as 27 used to be--
much older than it is now. In America,
you are either unscathed
or all scarred. I'm scared
that the way you are, is the way
that all people's hearts really claw.

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