#564
Merging
A friend once told me that
if any event that you're getting raped,
you should yell "Fire!" instead of "Rape!"
because if you yell "rape" there is
a less likely chance that someone might
come.
She dislikes all men but reads
well at poetry events, with a smile
that could only be characterized as,
coy.
Another friend amuses himself with quotes
from Brett Easton Ellis'
Less Than Zero:
How at a stoplight the narrator
saw a billboard ad that read,
Disappear Here, how Blair said,
"People are afraid to merge
on freeways in Los Angeles."
He has problems sometimes
with guys who use the stalls
in public places, and one time
it was so bad, he wouldn't
stop off at the gas station:
"I can hold it in, I could hold it in
until we get back to my house."
He nearly had a panic attack before
we got home.
Another friend constantly
bemoans the fact that she is
"socially lazy"; her boyfriend is
Mexican and he is a musician.
His brother is a meth addict
and likes to steal money from their mother.
At family parties, strifes
are inside jokes. "They look at me,
like I'm some clean-cut, stuck-up, conservative
Asian," (as she says this
I must keep from looking
like I want to comment)
"They look at me and think,
you don't know this inside joke."
Pain is a Spanish word.
La familia is not aware that
she and her boyfriend have been
through the best and the worst:
that is, mushrooms that
smack the universe into them
while they are driving on the 5
to Wesley's, and
how the orgy went wrong
and she got all the action
and he had to watch three other men
stick their dirty, sweaty
Corona and lime fingers in her mouth
and check her temperature
rectally -
even after the best and the worst,
she says with a bit of relief that
he is a good guy, that he is
understanding, and, with even more relief,
she tells me,
"I am so glad he hasn't told me
he loves me yet."
I wonder.
I don't always wonder.
Sometimes I shut my eyes.
Sometimes, there is a poetic
caesura, this brief period where,
I hear it, I really hear it,
but I am not really listening,
I am not really letting it soak in;
and I hold in my breath like
I am moving straight through the
Irvine-Corona Expressway tunnel
at a snail's pace -
I'll economize my inner breath
until I turn red, blue, and purple
with waiting
for an end, possibly.
I fear the worst in myself:
An inability to let it soak in.
That I am an emotional mutant,
and if I touch someone's heart,
it'll burst into flames.
It's a stupid fear, really -
I keep telling myself it is.
They're all just words;
and these are just people.
"When you see what's there,"
my sister said after telling me
she is going to marry my best friend;
he is seven years older than her
and vulnerable right now; he is
of few words and she is of many,
and she is convinced that even his
favorite coffee mug has a soul;
he constantly tries to tell her
that computers process and
can't critically think - and he
feels he persists with this
statement less to represent
his philosophy and more to
protect her, young as she is;
"When you see what's there,
of course you'll be afraid.
But dogs don't run away from
ghosts.
They run away from the
feeling of knowing something
is there and they're not seeing it.
Is that how you want to live?
How can Love reach you like that?"
I wonder
at her precocious wisdom,
brightly unmitigated,
her deliberate ease with
trust;
I wonder
what the best word is.
Maybe, "Help!"
but it implies that once things
are resolved, or fixed, or whatever,
that it's over.
"Stay" might be better.
Or even,
"Even though I can be a bore
or a little clumsy, moody, inhospitable,
insensitive, slow, and even
downright cruel,
I would like it if you stayed."
A friend once told me that
if any event that you're getting raped,
you should yell "Fire!" instead of "Rape!"
because if you yell "rape" there is
a less likely chance that someone might
come.
She dislikes all men but reads
well at poetry events, with a smile
that could only be characterized as,
coy.
Another friend amuses himself with quotes
from Brett Easton Ellis'
Less Than Zero:
How at a stoplight the narrator
saw a billboard ad that read,
Disappear Here, how Blair said,
"People are afraid to merge
on freeways in Los Angeles."
He has problems sometimes
with guys who use the stalls
in public places, and one time
it was so bad, he wouldn't
stop off at the gas station:
"I can hold it in, I could hold it in
until we get back to my house."
He nearly had a panic attack before
we got home.
Another friend constantly
bemoans the fact that she is
"socially lazy"; her boyfriend is
Mexican and he is a musician.
His brother is a meth addict
and likes to steal money from their mother.
At family parties, strifes
are inside jokes. "They look at me,
like I'm some clean-cut, stuck-up, conservative
Asian," (as she says this
I must keep from looking
like I want to comment)
"They look at me and think,
you don't know this inside joke."
Pain is a Spanish word.
La familia is not aware that
she and her boyfriend have been
through the best and the worst:
that is, mushrooms that
smack the universe into them
while they are driving on the 5
to Wesley's, and
how the orgy went wrong
and she got all the action
and he had to watch three other men
stick their dirty, sweaty
Corona and lime fingers in her mouth
and check her temperature
rectally -
even after the best and the worst,
she says with a bit of relief that
he is a good guy, that he is
understanding, and, with even more relief,
she tells me,
"I am so glad he hasn't told me
he loves me yet."
I wonder.
I don't always wonder.
Sometimes I shut my eyes.
Sometimes, there is a poetic
caesura, this brief period where,
I hear it, I really hear it,
but I am not really listening,
I am not really letting it soak in;
and I hold in my breath like
I am moving straight through the
Irvine-Corona Expressway tunnel
at a snail's pace -
I'll economize my inner breath
until I turn red, blue, and purple
with waiting
for an end, possibly.
I fear the worst in myself:
An inability to let it soak in.
That I am an emotional mutant,
and if I touch someone's heart,
it'll burst into flames.
It's a stupid fear, really -
I keep telling myself it is.
They're all just words;
and these are just people.
"When you see what's there,"
my sister said after telling me
she is going to marry my best friend;
he is seven years older than her
and vulnerable right now; he is
of few words and she is of many,
and she is convinced that even his
favorite coffee mug has a soul;
he constantly tries to tell her
that computers process and
can't critically think - and he
feels he persists with this
statement less to represent
his philosophy and more to
protect her, young as she is;
"When you see what's there,
of course you'll be afraid.
But dogs don't run away from
ghosts.
They run away from the
feeling of knowing something
is there and they're not seeing it.
Is that how you want to live?
How can Love reach you like that?"
I wonder
at her precocious wisdom,
brightly unmitigated,
her deliberate ease with
trust;
I wonder
what the best word is.
Maybe, "Help!"
but it implies that once things
are resolved, or fixed, or whatever,
that it's over.
"Stay" might be better.
Or even,
"Even though I can be a bore
or a little clumsy, moody, inhospitable,
insensitive, slow, and even
downright cruel,
I would like it if you stayed."