To every missed connection: a poem without an end.
Sometimes I lose myself in the midst of my own life.
Taking that grey-scaled bus into the middle of a glimmering city hub,
and every person I see, I hope they will be you.
I see your face in everyone I meet:
your nose here, your eyes there, your smile on cheeks of a sleeping newborn.
You wear a dozen masks in this seething boil of people;
you blend into the teeming brew and crush your body against a tide of others'.
You've seen me naked, I know:
seen me dancing along the lines of someone else's rhythms,
seen me flailing with God's heartbeat,
throwing up my face to catch a few precious drops of rain.
The lights flash, dim and brighten, the sound grows muffled as it drives underground then emerges
to swell round and lush in our bellies and
behind our eyes.
It narrows its focus until soon there is only us,
only you and I and this circle of dark,
this raging boom boom-boom surrounding us, drilling into us,
pushing us closer and closer to a violent roil,
a crushing pressure,
an ecstatic climax.
You've seen me fall back from that,
collapse,
seen me fight to breathe and to gather up the exhausted pieces of my self,
seen my skin hanging loose off flaccid muscles and withered bone;
seen the person being rebuilt, rescarred,
repainted and resurfaced again and again.
(And I, I've seen the same of you.)
I pick you out like a jewel in a storm.
One cell of a hundred,
and I choose you,
choose all your myriad limbs and lips
and facets and heartstrings.
We descend into the dark, throw away our swords and gauntlets,
and get utterly lost in the spaces between our fumbling arms.
Quick, short breaths grow long and heavy,
warm, with syllables quilt-stitched onto one another.
Time slows, creaks to a dizzy halt;
when we pull back from our fight the sun is long since gone.
Dark is coming out of dusk,
and yellow lights are beginning to gleam on the edges of the beehive metropolis.
"Time to part ways" chimes a steeple clock,
and a round of thin cheers raises from every shadowed corner.
We disentangle ourselves,
give glass eyes and crutches back to their where-we-belong,
and as all is sorted out I realize that I will look for you tomorrow.
I never knew you before,
and any second time would be under carnival mainstages instead of firefly glow.
Never knew that's what I wanted,
never knew it's how I might be.
When the sun raises up his arms and stretches for a new day,
I'll be home under a blanket of scents and pillowed by thoughts that are only half-real.
This is known, it is true and good and golden-solid,
but it can't stop me from wondering
that awful breathe-in breathe-out
question:
so what if?
Taking that grey-scaled bus into the middle of a glimmering city hub,
and every person I see, I hope they will be you.
I see your face in everyone I meet:
your nose here, your eyes there, your smile on cheeks of a sleeping newborn.
You wear a dozen masks in this seething boil of people;
you blend into the teeming brew and crush your body against a tide of others'.
You've seen me naked, I know:
seen me dancing along the lines of someone else's rhythms,
seen me flailing with God's heartbeat,
throwing up my face to catch a few precious drops of rain.
The lights flash, dim and brighten, the sound grows muffled as it drives underground then emerges
to swell round and lush in our bellies and
behind our eyes.
It narrows its focus until soon there is only us,
only you and I and this circle of dark,
this raging boom boom-boom surrounding us, drilling into us,
pushing us closer and closer to a violent roil,
a crushing pressure,
an ecstatic climax.
You've seen me fall back from that,
collapse,
seen me fight to breathe and to gather up the exhausted pieces of my self,
seen my skin hanging loose off flaccid muscles and withered bone;
seen the person being rebuilt, rescarred,
repainted and resurfaced again and again.
(And I, I've seen the same of you.)
I pick you out like a jewel in a storm.
One cell of a hundred,
and I choose you,
choose all your myriad limbs and lips
and facets and heartstrings.
We descend into the dark, throw away our swords and gauntlets,
and get utterly lost in the spaces between our fumbling arms.
Quick, short breaths grow long and heavy,
warm, with syllables quilt-stitched onto one another.
Time slows, creaks to a dizzy halt;
when we pull back from our fight the sun is long since gone.
Dark is coming out of dusk,
and yellow lights are beginning to gleam on the edges of the beehive metropolis.
"Time to part ways" chimes a steeple clock,
and a round of thin cheers raises from every shadowed corner.
We disentangle ourselves,
give glass eyes and crutches back to their where-we-belong,
and as all is sorted out I realize that I will look for you tomorrow.
I never knew you before,
and any second time would be under carnival mainstages instead of firefly glow.
Never knew that's what I wanted,
never knew it's how I might be.
When the sun raises up his arms and stretches for a new day,
I'll be home under a blanket of scents and pillowed by thoughts that are only half-real.
This is known, it is true and good and golden-solid,
but it can't stop me from wondering
that awful breathe-in breathe-out
question:
so what if?