i never have liked uppercase i's
i know it's absolutely stupid
but they always make me feel more important than others
like i'm always saying I, I, I.

see even that was weird
way too many eyes
so i spend half my days, proofreading my lines
to make sure that i'm exactly the same size
as everyone else

when i first met you it absolutely blew me away
to find someone else who lowers their eyes
i'm serious, it's amazing to find someone who wastes as much time as yourself
hitting backspace, and
cursing auto-correct for not allowing this behavior

but after a while i noticed you stopped with the i's
maybe it was around the time **** got weird
maybe it was a fad; or i have some absurd superstition
but it's cool
You always were the bigger person, anyway.

"Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood"
T.S. Eliot (1888 - 1965)


~~~


perhaps.

can I communicate
what I cannot fully comprehend?

my voice poetic keener, age-softened,
grows less popular
for it
no longer reaches for
christmas ornament words and creamy cake-in-the-rain imagery

leave that to the better ones.

cherish simplest:
coming home to fresh sheets,
plumped pillows,
music,
tousled hair on pillowed histories,
river walks,
the lightest hand touch that rouses
the fireplace of contentment to glow briefly,
from logs that are more embered ash moments
than substance
capable of more flaming

the rumpled strivings of the young poets,
creativity of the masters of
voice and dancings bodies,
shopping lists of life~items that
reshape, restore my old~ness,
the revelations of the historians,
inducements to believe
in yet, more.

these exteriors are comprehendable.

don't forget the orange juice,
the first chilled swig from the plastic,
confirms I am breath-yet-capable,
one more poem-mission ready,
the mission objectives still not published.

Sun east welcomes me,
woman puttering kitchen coffee noises
it is neither spring yet or winter gone,
in-between like me,
in-between naissance and history remnant

question thy fiat,
Mr. Eliot,
cannot frame myself,
my who-I-am
six decades of myself.

can it then ere be said,
his poetry communicated
or ere contained ever a single
genuine word?

can I communicate
what I cannot fully comprehend?

at 3:37Am,
you ask,
I endeavor,
an answer
for you

an answer,
that is
intended
to last
a millennium

a millennium

a thousand years,
a thousand seconds,
a thousandth thousandth of
one second

the answer is firmament
the answer is permanent

the answer is plain
thy answer is fancy

You are my best poem
You are encased with in me

You are a piece of me

So, so selfishly
no endeavor needed,
but fervor'd
do I reply

Your being well is not
a sufficient condition
but a necessary one
for my own self-being

For whom the bell tolls,
For whom do I write?

I write for thee,
and in the words
are assured

the mutuality,
the betterment of us,
our private society

dare not deny me this!

for if denied,
I am
condemned

for a millennium

i.
no matter what your teachers
may tell you, your grades are not a
measure of how smart you are, that
has more to do with how you handle your
heart, and i have never seen anyone love
more fiercely or smart than you.  

ii.
i have let boys touch me just because
i was scared to lose them; don't let them
lay a hand on you without you asking
them to, you are worth more than that.

iii.
people will walk away, but you've known
that already.  keep your chin up so that when
they turn back one last time, they know that
you don't need them.
you don't need them.

iv.
i hope you find somebody that holds your
hands, even when you're nervous and
they start to sweat.  if they pull away,
you come find me and i swear,
i won't let go.

I then asked God,
Create a stone no being can lift
And to me he responded
No stone is too heavy
Nor too light
I create things your mind wouldn't conceive
I created your reality
Your perception of what is true
I bend the laws your greatest men have formulated
For those laws are basic concepts
Trivial matters and human logic
I created logic itself
For with a stone no being can lift
It would not be impossible
Yet, it would be possible
For there is no logic that binds me

To be loved by a writer
Is to be immortalized
You will live on forever in her writing
Your quirks,
Your ideas,
Your insecurities,
Writers notice everything
And we never forget
You might catch her smiling at you
For what seems like no reason at all
But she's just trying to describe
The exact color of your eyes

To be loved by a writer
Is to have your entire relationship in written word
All you have to do is read and re-live everything again
Your first kiss,
Your first fight,
Your first date
Nostalgic memories in chronological order
And you may even learn something you never knew
Since everything will be in her point of view

To be loved by a writer
Is to see her frustration
Because she wishes she could be an artist
Since no words serve you justice
She wishes she could just paint a picture
And then they would understand
Because no amount of words could perfectly depict
Your hair sticking up,
Your abundance of freckles,
You wearing glasses
She gets upset when she thinks
She'll never fully portray all the things you say and do
But she'll never run out of ways to say "I love you"

To be loved by a writer
Is to be eternal
And to never fully disappear
And no matter what, she'll see you everywhere
Even when she opens her mind and escapes reality
Because she is the writer
And you are her writing
For you own her heart
From which her words flow

I searched for where you met.
Cambridge at Christmas.
Now a shoe store, a Top Man,
trees drooled with tinsel.
So I imagined that night
at Falcon Yard in '56
and the church-like windows.
Didn't expect a thunderclap
but it came, a bolt
through a blue night.
The red-hairbanned girl,
tipsy, she loved your work,
your raw debut words.
Amateur dancing,
brandy on your tongue,
a kiss bang smash on the mouth
from her hunky boy.
     'Ridiculous to call it love.'
Smitten, she bit,
gnawed on your cheek
to leave her own mountain range.
Her interest - peaked.
Your person - snaffled,
cast as the lead
in her American play.