Run Away with Me

I was thinking as I listened to her
about Byron’s relentless nihilism
that only found out in intoxication
any kind of remedy for the things

she was telling me about abortions
and rapes and how no I won’t go
home with you and how Byron
alone among the Romantics dealt

overtly with sex not just love like
Shelley or fantasy like Keats or
like Wordsworth the dull sheep
and all the blokes in the bar were

staring at her green eyes red hair
bust you know the kind that blokes
will stare at and I thought Byron
really caught something a seed a

kernel of what Nietzsche ran away
with I said please run away with
me and she laughed looked down
into her beer and was finished


P.S. An earlier draft of this poem, entitled Sex and Nihilism, appeared in Otoliths 13.