Lyrics My Love Is Too Much - Vanessa Daou

My Love Is Too Much

My love is too much-
It embarrasses you-
Blood, poems, babies
Red needs that telephone
From foreign countries
Black needs that spatter
The pages
Of your white papery heart
You would rather have a girl
With simpler needs:
Lunch, sex, undemanding
Loving
Dinner, wine, bed
The occasional blow-job
& needs that are never
Red as gaping wounds
But cool & blue
As television screens
In tract houses
Oh my love
Those simple girls
With simple needs
Read my books too
They tell me they feel
The same as I do
They tell me I transcribe
The language of their hearts
They tell me I translate
Their mute, unspoken pain
Into the white light
Of language
Oh love
No love
Is ever wholly undemanding
It can pretend coolness
Until the pain comes
Until the first baby comes
Howling her own infant need
Into a universe
That never summoned her
The love you seek
Cannot be found
Except in the white pages
Of recipe books
It is cooking you seek
Not love
Cooking with sex coming after
Cool sex
That speaks to the penis alone
& not the howling chaos
Of the heart