Occupational Hazards

carnies call for marks to play unwinnable
non-games just like hellish croupiers
that’s what love is; place your bets

doctors stare steadily at your falling beats
practicing the crushing of love fools
someone tell the family it’s gone

postmen carry the letters of lovelost
into the neighborhood of your night
smirking at outgoing envelopings

dentists pry the lovesick from faces
wet with the tears of regret
just a little pinch of agony now

bankers stack the currency of loss
and grin with greed-grimed toothiness
we’re calling in your desire-debt now

soldiers return in pain-draped boxes
while those who hope salute
surely love won’t treat me thus

a firefighter looses a deluge of dereliction
onto leaping tongues of loversfire
extinguishing another could have been

judges sit as glaring gownsmen all
to sentence the careless
to nothing at all just greyness

what will my vocation be when
I have broken pacts
made by the expectancy of her?