Month: March 2016

our kids

if we had children, they
would be geniuses.
this much is quite apparent
to me. any child of my loins
would already be
blessed by my most
excellent genes – maybe a little
bipolar, slight chance of being
a raging alcoholic, and
almost certainly have ADD – but!
she would be smart enough and deep enough
to handle those minor
issues and use her problems
as raw material to
become an artist.
not better than me,
of course,
but she could thrive
quite comfortably
in my shadow.

and you! you’re not too shabby
yourself. you’ve got a first-class
brain, a selfless and noble heart,
and eyes that are pretty
cute, the way they
twinkle when you smile.

yes, our children would be
a true boon and blessing
to all humankind.
it’s too bad
that I have no desire
to throw away
18+ years of my life raising one,
(let alone more)
and you presumably
have no desire to father one
on me.

posterity will have to settle
for our brilliant art,
hilarious jokes and
exciting personalities.
such a shame about that.

changed

something is different about me
tonight.
is it my outfit?
(dressed down for once)
did I get a haircut?
(shorter and blown out)
is it my mood?
(calm, cool and collected,
for once I’m not flipping out.)
actually,
it’s all of the above.

did you notice?
oh. wait.
I just juked the stats
by asking you to your face.
you noticed one out of three,
or at least the one I asked about.

never mind.
I’ll just have to wait
for the next time I do
something different.

the wall

I think
the thing I love most about
trying to love you
is the way you stand firm
against all my battering and striving.

I can throw myself at you
with all my might
like waves in the ocean
ceaselessly crashing
against a sea wall,
and you withstand it.

if you showed any signs of weakness,
wavering, or hesitance, I would
have had to be afraid
that I could actually
realize my dreams and desires.
that is not a prospect
devoutly to be wished, at all.
it seems the more hopeless the outcome,
the more I want it.

this is why I’m glad that your maze
is so very big and wicked. I can fight
it all I want; there’s no getting through.
a whole different fear
would suddenly appear
if I were to make it through to where
you live inside your castle.
that’s the place
where I lose all my bravery
and my armor. luckily I’ll never
find out, because you’re a great Wall
and I’m just the lonely,
ever-seeking sea.

renewal.spring

I adore the vibe so far.
don’t get me wrong,
I truly, madly, deeply enjoy
your company and our meeting
of the minds. there’s
not a doubt in mine
that we’re doing great work here,
both separately
and together. my only note
is that I would just like to add
a bit more of our bodies
into the mix.

I’m feeling a certain
need to know – as if
I was on a need-to-know basis before
and now that very need
has come to pass –
a kind of hunger to learn
the precise texture of
your skin beneath my fingertips,
to know what your mouth
tastes like, to test
if this chemistry I sense
is real, because I’m corporeal
and alive, damn it –
all my protestations to the contrary –
and my body is making its
presence known; because
spring has sprung and I feel
the sap rising in my blood
like water inexorably coming to a rolling boil
and it makes me want to touch
and be touched like
nobody’s business, it makes me
want to spawn wildly like
salmon who are about to die and
must out-jump winter-lean, hungry bears
just for the chance
to pass on their legacy.

all this spring business
feels urgent and primal and wild
and on one level it is
but please note
that I’m every bit as scared as you are, so
there’s really no rush. any motion
down the path is better than
standing still. we can go as slow
as you like: hand-holding here
or there, a kiss
goodnight, some
acknowledgment that I’m
not crazy and there actually
is romance here,
is all I ask.

(even the tiniest progress will be used
in service of that exquisite Promethean torment
from which I wring my poetry.)

so if we could possibly make
this slight adjustment,
just a minor course correction really,
I’d love to renew our romance.
have your people call my people
if you think it has legs.

make room! make room!

I’m so high on love
right now. I know
it’s just chemicals, my brain
releasing oxytocin in response
to a possible opportunity
for pair bonding, it’s really just
nature trying to trick me
into reproducing,
but it feels like heaven.
it feels like sheer bliss,
like I need to merge
my heart and soul and mind and body with another.

but I remember
the other times I felt this way.
I remember how I couldn’t stand
to be apart for a second, how quickly
they moved in and how that was the
beginning of the slow death
we both dreaded until the moment
it ended.

I have my life
and I would be so happy
to share it with you
but
there’s no room.

my heart is spacious enough.
my heart is an abandoned warehouse
populated by angry ghosts,
who I’d really like
to put to rest. it’s my apartment
that won’t house
another person.

fuck. I really love
this apartment. perhaps
some form of time sharing
might be possible.
I’ll just scoop myself
up off the floor and pour
my jellied heart
back into its steel-sided mold,
and try again to get close
without losing my identity.

personal.space

I need to be alone
but not quite so lone as to be
lonely. my personal
version of space is at once
as vast as the cosmos and as cold,
and as short, warm, sparking, and electro-conductive
as the distance between the atoms
of our skin, even when
separated by two layers of cloth,
or one when I take off
my hoodie.

I want you around
all the time; I talk to you
in my head constantly while
we’re apart – and do you do
the same? do you think of things
to say to me, save them up like flowers pressed inside a book, to fall out years later, forgotten? – and yet
sometimes it seems
I can’t bear to be in your presence
for the ocean of longing that rushes
through my veins, the blood-warm sea
magnetically drawn to its icy moon,
for the welling words that lap
behind my eyes but cannot be said
out loud for fear they’ll be denied,
canceled out,
stamped illegitimate.

as if you can cancel chemistry,
rule out relativity, pass
on physics, legislate electricity,
nullify neutrons, negate magnetism,
deny the very dinosaurs
and stamp out science altogether
because you say it ain’t so.
go ahead and rewrite all the textbooks
if it makes you feel better. I know
my feelings and the physics involved here
like I know my own bones, my own skin.
I have all the faith in the world
in science.

I’ll make space for you in this station
and bring my lonely rocket in
if you can open your own airlock
and let me breathe your rarefied
atmosphere. a little mingling now
and then could refresh us both.
I’ve been sending out the signals,
won’t you acknowledge and respond?

light (s)miles

I’m sorry,
but I can’t be sorry
about this:

every time I look at you
my entire body tries to smile
until the feeling bubbles right out
of my eyes and mouth uncontrollably
like I’m drowning in happiness
and I laugh for no reason
except that my veins are
too full of bees not to, my blood
has been replaced with champagne,
being around you in the flesh feels
like my finger in a light socket,
as if all my molecules are shivering
gladly, passionately shocked awake
by this lightning storm of pure raw energy.

please note: it’s not just you.
it’s also the way the light bends for you –
as if I can see all the tiny little atoms
and their electrons spinning around their neutrons,
and the force keeping them
in that constant whirling motion is love;
as if they are building a subatomic golden shield
of purest beneficence around you
that no negative ions can penetrate –
as if it loves you every little bit
(every jot and tittle, every microscopic cell
and quark and mysterious particle)
as much as I do.

canceled

I’m so sorry to inform you
that love did not get renewed
for a second season.
my heart has been canceled.
it wasn’t testing well
with audiences,
especially the one person
to whom it was floated.
Mr. Neilsen said no; it was a hard pass
by the head of the network.

so.
it remains to be seen
whether there is a market
for my nonsense.
perhaps a reboot
ten years from now
would perform better
in the target demographic
of crazy cat ladies
and the men that love them.

I know this might not be kosher, but
I’d still love to see
the show come back to life.
if you happen to know anyone
who might be interested
in a romantic comedy that’s
heavy on the comedy,
light on the romance,
maybe you could
give him my number.
if you don’t want it, there must be
someone out there who does.

the call

it was an accident, I’m so sure.
how many times
have my friends accidentally
voice/video called me
from messenger in the middle
of chatting? happens
all the time. I’ve done it myself;
that call button is so very
easy to hit.

but usually I hang up
before the other person even
has a chance to answer.
and if someone I’m chatting with
calls me, I don’t pick up. people agree
in text first before they
talk on the phone
these days,
let alone video chat. so, knowing
it’s most likely a mistake, I’ll
normally hit decline
automatically
and resume my
text-based conversation.

but.
not this time.
I answered. we were both shocked
that it even connected.

our video chat lasted
less than a minute
(54 seconds, to be exact – but
who’s counting)
but it was so nice to hear
your voice and
see your face,
even if I was forced to
alternate between them
because my phone and video chat
don’t seem simpatico,
at least doing it via messenger –
someone screwed up somewhere,
I think. or I need to read
the help.

but anyway. it means
nothing.
a random accident,
a finger slip.
but. for what
it’s worth, I’m glad
you rang, and gladder still
I answered.