Tag: love

brutal

I’m not
crying. it’s just
this cold wind dragging tears
from my eyes. this wind
that last week loved me
this week is cold and cruel,
cutting, trying to wind
its icy fingers
beneath my coat,
pulling unwilling moisture
from my eyes, making
my nose run. I can’t even
compare it to you, because
you haven’t been overtly
cruel. only in withholding
your true heart, your deepest
love have you shown
the coldness that lurks
in your chest.

what it’s like

when you break a glass
and for months, years afterwards
you find those sharp-edged shards
in the most unexpected places?
it’s like that.

that bread you forgot about,
there’s only a hard crust left
and it looks so lonely that
you eat it anyway, and then
it cuts up your mouth?
like that.

that little table clock,
the one that sits high
up on the bookshelf,
the one that lies constantly,
the one that doesn’t want to
work any more, the one that’s given up
for want of a new battery?
the one that no one notices
in its beatless silent solitude
but you? the one that
if you did try to fix it,
would be sure to spitefully fall
right on your foot?
it’s like that.

but even that dead clock is right
twice a day. too bad I can’t
say the same for the thing
(a wounded, wounding, icy
shard that rankles;
a churlish, shriveled crust
that rots and plots revenge;
a wind-up toy that won’t perform
its only purpose)
inside my chest.

relativity

time seems to fly
when I’m talking to him.
when I’m alone it crawls
like a broken insect
from which someone
has removed the wings. my father
did that as a child, so
I know a little bit
about wanton cruelty.

left to my own devices
I limp around lying
to myself, lie around limply,
longingly let loose
my languishing love
in languid dreams
and hazy, dimly lit reveries
about something I know
can never be. these surreal hours
are of time but not in it;
they don’t count.

I’m just
waiting
for real time to resume,
dying for the second
the clock is resuscitated
so my heart, too,
can beat again.

natural

I walk down the street,
my hair half
damp from the shower
because I’m late
as usual
and didn’t have time
to dry it properly. I feel
the wind drying it for me, the air
touching me all over, tiny
loving caresses, remember
the sky earlier when the clouds
seemed to sway and dance lightly
in place for my amusement,
and wonder at how
nature loves me so
and is not afraid
to touch me,
finds nothing wrong
with me
body
mind
soul
or heart
and why it is that you
can’t just be
more natural.

the wish

the host said
if we put money in the tip jar,
we would each
get a wish. I thought
that I would concentrate
on my wish as I put the money in,
but when the time came
I forgot. I was too busy talking
to you.

I wondered
if my lack of focus
would prevent my wish
from coming true.
but then I remembered
that I’m always wishing
for the same thing, with
absolutely zero hope
of it ever coming true.
my whole being
is one big wish
these days. I’ll just have to hope
the wish-granting genie
will accept the purity
of my desire
in lieu of a momentary spurt
of attention.

the secret of my prolificity

“You’ve been writing a lot
of poems lately,”
he says to me. “Yeah,” comes my
suspicious reply.
“Are they all about
the same person?”
“No,” I say, and give a harmless example
of one I wrote recently
to a different ex on the subject of
the dissolution of his marriage.
(nothing nostalgic
or lovelorn vis-a-vis him, per se,
just advice I wish
someone had given me
before I wasted nine years of my life
on yet another man.)

but.
the question he’s really asking
is whether there’s someone new
in my life who has
inspired me. I dare not say
the bald and/or naked truth,
which is that there is,
because it’s you and I
have no right to claim inspiration
where love does not dare
to speak its name.

I’d far rather pretend
that this sudden burst
of creativity has nothing to do
with you, just like you will
have nothing to do –
at least in any romantic context –
with me.

arm candy

I get it now. you want a girl
that looks pretty
on your arm, that does art
but only insofar as it doesn’t
compete with yours.
you want a girl
that you can write poems about –
about her beauty and about
what it’s like to have sex with her,
that’ll make all the dudes jealous, for sure –
but who definitely won’t
write any back.
the last thing you want
is a girl who will write an ode
to the back of your neck
at the drop of a hat, a girl
who isn’t always
perfectly coiffed or styled or
perfumed, a girl
who talks too much
and too loudly, a girl who might
take attention away from you.

whereas I want a boy
that will write poems about me but
also appreciate it
when I reciprocate,
who will have a show with me
where we both read the poems
we wrote
in competition and in collaboration
via correspondence.
I want a boy
who will encourage my art almost
as much as his own, who will celebrate
me as much as I celebrate him.
I want a boy who
likes me for me and likes himself
enough to let me love him.

so
I guess you’ll have to look
somewhere else
for your arm candy, and I’ll
have to look elsewhere
for my Real Boy.

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.