To Tammy

When as on rare occassion
they want to create an artist
they will feed it thin
then love
develops fast but imperfectly
and leaves a great selling.

They let it live on group hugs
and watery conversation.
Skinny relatives in dark places
filled with folklore and fear,
never quite out of myth and
nowhere to hide.

There are few dinner parties
and couch conversation does not
venture where it goes. Thin and
perverse half grown love
is the burning that fuels
the selling. Everything flows out,
rarely in. The sale is the thing.

Those of us who live among the riches
of people who know who we are
may be immunized against doubt,
reared to enjoy and applaud, certain
of a place in the eye of God.
Sometimes we buy.