You Never Can Tell

For five years I loved him
Outloud
In earshot
I shot him a glance
That pearced his heart
And left a permanent mark
We were in critical care in the ICU
When I saw him
Everywhere.
Swimming in one another’s love
Even the blood we shared
Shouted life or death and life and death in the rhythmic pumping of our joint heart
But You never can tell
What you can’t tell about a person
Even with adjoining plastic tubes in our blue green veins.
You see,
You Wanna Talk about Guns?
I once caressed his hand with
The black mess
That was left
From cleaning the
barrel,
carrying handle
echad, shtaim, shalosh!
…and that’s the count
so for now
im taking this machine
this m-16
apart
Only to Put it back together again?
Like that story about humpty dumpty
When he fell off that wall
Or just went plain a-wol
Or was a cigarette break from his shift
At the mall?
Who can tell-
When you cant tell what you can tell about a person-
Because the weapon in this hand
Is no toy
It’s the real mcoy
and boy
you disintegrated
Into one million pieces
And now there no body where body once stood
Because you never can tell what you cant tell about a person
Because the one thing I cant tell
Is time
In this rhyme
And record,
When its on the rewind
And the dj takes it back
Just like that
And gives us a second chance
For romance
And you never can tell what you cant tell about a person
Because I thought the first one
Would be trustworthy
And I know im wordy
But let me make it clear that you
Just
cant
tell.