Eight okay poems.
In the porcelain palace of my mind
I think of a fantasy
where we drink tea
if not for the tannins and antioxidants
or all the other good things for our hearts
then for the three minutes it takes
for the tea to steep
in which you are my captive audience
Or as captive as a butterfly can be in cast iron shackles
I'd be content to sit in silence
but long for you to open your mouth
to hear what magical wondrous things might pour forth
that warm my heart and tickle my brain
These moments of ecstasy and pockets of whimsy are only possible
Because I am so perpetually untethered to anyone or anything
Moorless and adrift
A boulder tethered to my chest and thrown in the sea
I don't want to be me
but I don't want to be free
I think? So I sink
deliberate and self-possesed
I slide away from the orange-tinged fresco
of dawn breaking on surface
Underneath
light bent, warm colors absorbed
I only see blue
I wish you could love me in this place too
I visit a twisted beauty here and I won't leave it for you
Decades later
maybe this boulder erodes
And I'll leave my lagoon — free to float once more
Aimlessly. Listlessly.
But never ashore
Where I doubt you've been waiting
We don't kiss in the daytime
Your place, not mine and never in public
At least not anymore
not after the first time
on a sidewalk on Sutter
as evening became night
You asked with a smile if I brought all my girls here
I laughed at how far from the truth that was
I spent a little bit of time by the ocean
in the dark, still of the night
Impossible not to think of you
in this place where land ends and ocean begins
Wind whistles, waves crash
God I miss you.
And your flavor —
your fingerprint on my soul
"Leave no trace,"
the camper's creed commands
A foolish plea
for someone like you
Who vibrates and dents
leaving trace upon trace
A whirling dervish
upon the Sunset dunes
You do uncomfortable things to my heart
such that it flutters maniacally
on the verge of arrest
or at times slows to a crawl
like hibernatory fauna before winter's frost
especially in the quiet and soft moments
Where we share unspoken intimacies
And the only touch exchanged is an errant graze
or tentative pat of your knee
which I do like a child testing waters
And the only kiss I receive
is the kiss of your laughter against my eardrums
I take these and any other scraps
and file them away somewhere in my evidence locker
so one day I might indict you
and compel you to confess
that there was something here
If not love, perhaps at least like
And even then, if you plead to a lesser charge like mere fondness
I could be happy
Or perhaps happier than I am now
in the muddy grey waters where I find myself today
But still, you are everything to me and all that you give feels like all I deserve
I don't know who I am
I don't know who I like
I don't know what I'm good at
I know far too much about what I'm bad at
Every day is painful
To wake up
and throw yourself out into a world
so resistant
it rejects you and spits you up
Like the asperities of
earth’s tectonic plates
A polite reminder that one means nothing to no one
is an unfinished pint beside an abandoned barstool
or a conversation interrupted against a sun halfway set
Celestial incompleteness
This necessary cycle
aborted unfairly midway
like an unsung melody
discarded between chord progressions so intense
that the rising harmonics arouse hairs on one's arms
followed by crushing silence
infinitely more upsetting than the coda of a stylus
circling the spindle at the end of a record
You proffer no bargain
against departure
in meaningful ways
instead relying on veiled digs
faking lament for a moment gone too soon
Yet it feels so cosmically upsetting
to think of my solar soul
aching to set and never rise
but destined to orbit, forever
Caught in gravity's pull
a runaway train clinging to tracks
for no reason except momentum
Jealous of a buggy's free will
atop saharan sand dunes
or some lucky star
shooting across the night sky
For to be free and untethered
must be worth the cost of burning and disappearing
outside earth's toxic atmosphere
