16.6
She will cut short what he is saying. His rehearsèd arguments will have no chance to work, for as soon as he starts speaking she will know he is not there, where she is now, in the observer’s state of lived experience, will know there is no right thing he could say, will know moreover she will want to hear it sometime in her future when they have been long apart, when she could use reminding of the youth that she once was. For now it is of disconnection, that feeling lava-burbles in his presence, it overwhelms what he is saying. She doesn’t want to but she wades into the pain. She starts apologizing, over and over. She’s talking over him as he tries not to forget his speech. It’s clear she isn’t hearing him. Her face goes scarlet, water’s on the surface tension of her eyes. He tries embrace. She’s shaking her head no as if at herself. The porch they’re on is mined and he is limbless. He claims that she’s apologizing for leaving him in California. His hope, starved for seven days and then desiccated on the drive to old Nebraska, latches itself onto what could be a morsel — now she sees that it was wrong to leave him. In front of her a foot away, more than her beauty it’s her pheromones that make desire replace his desperation. His she’s sensing make her hesitate, make her argue with herself inside her head. Why is she still apologizing? She says she doesn’t want to cry about him anymore. Then be with me, he says, and this is not an option. Mind and body terminating love, it hurts, they both have tears, and she won’t let him hug. He tells himself she needs a little time, his appearance on her parents’ doorstep is shock. He holds onto this in stead as it becomes evident that she will not accept him. He trails off what he was saying, and this seems to do the trick as she ceases freaking out. But now the silence is unfriendly. Better she were raving in the street than sitting on a vintage coin-op staring at him with no words. Feeling judged his instinct is to pick a fight. At least that’s ground he’s sure of. He calmly asks her why she left, but all the self-control that he can muster’s not enough to mask the irritation in his voice. Surprisingly, she smiles. His confusion peaks and turns to anger. He doesn’t realize that he just set her free. She set herself free, already, by coming home, but now what bond of gossamer connected them was pulled apart, was snapped. Wherever they were in the world, that bond had been in each. Now not even pheromones were strong enough to reaffix it. In one inflection of his voice, it stuck to her no more.
16.7
Folks love having heard no poems that are not pop lyrics, they vote without economy, they mate with imprecision, redo the errors of their raising, and yet the love that they receive and make is of the same eternity — available to all — moreso it will save some few of them, will heap them less with sorrow, while those who loved unwisely and unwell are on the southeast coast of the Big Island, their shoes sticking to the molten rock beneath them, ready to give way, with geyser sprays of lava falling near.
The aging brain affects a memory, the past embellished and degraded. It holds onto forces more than faces. The institutions of tectonic drift remove the self as it once was, leaving love the only constant. That self had a different heart, before it was rended in sharp teeth. The constance falls down slowly, then flies up on thermal updrafts on the fallacies of love. Of course it doesn’t work for us, why tether it to mortals? Feeling’s undermined by what it’s tethered to. Satisfaction lies in victory, in getting what we wanted, so we don’t feel it very often.
Will you share your many billion dollars of abundance? No. Will you stop polluting our whole world? No. Can we have clean energy or none at all? No. Will you stop dropping bombs on women and children? No. Will you stop killing endangered species? No. Will you leave the rainforests be? No. Will you take your filth out of the ocean? No. Can we get back together? No.
16.8
Carry on without a darkened countenance, in fellowship and cheer, letting others actualize in every interaction, think of those we’re talking to as Thou, break the ice a thousand times, a thousand times thereafter, aware of their inherent dignity, speaking to the god within them as it were, informing them of how to treat yourself, and thereby how to act with others, with themselves, spreading the enlightenment, worried less about yourself because your focus is on them.
In a moment love can tingle, in a breath our interest pops like camera flashes on our body, gland, and brain — to have the moment in one’s lover’s arms of spent prosaic bliss, to wish the night would never end, so that this moment of pure love will be the whole of life to come. The merging of our highest selves in love will go beyond the satisfaction of release and show us we are more than just our day to day emotions, more than just the toil we are forced into, more than the limits of biology — we are the passage into constance, available to all. Merged pure love negates the limits of our lifespan — it happened with a special someone — and everything’s in motion, attempting to connect — the goal is combination, it can be achieved — the heat we’ve carried dissipates, the flash bulb pops, we’re fools in love again — O swing in rhythm, gentle love, and make you easy to accept!
Whenever two love after we, tell them of our names — let them touch the love we held (but just a bit less well) — yes tell them who we were and how we changed the game, by loving without tethers, by showing off its strength, with firm determination and allegiance to the space between us, that shot into the heavens, and escaped the fiercest gravity. Uncommon times we look up with a naked eye to see it going still — anyone who looks there sees it too — it could have been from anyone, but it was formed from us.
Her hair was flaxen, curls were loose and draping, bangs were cut against her brow, endowed with bright amuse, pretty starlets of the screen sat hours to affect the style in which hers laid, her eyes were flecked with brown and green, they sat in delight on her face, by looking side to side they made men move, her nose was there petite, it merged unnoticed in her face, her lips were of a paler red, the upper one was skinny and the lower wanted just a little padding, but they stretched into a wide and gorgeous smile, that was most authentic when she was surprised or felt embarrassed, she squinted when she laughed, in mirthful disappearing crinkles, smiling to her molars, the music of her laugh was three stacatto notes the same, then three more ascending, the longer that she laughed the quieter she got, til she was ‘most convulsing, the only sound the labored breaths she drew between the spasms, and her cheeks were claret, cheekbones resonant, her jaw was sharp down to a narrow chin, it made her face seem angular, but she had a touch of baby fat, the collagen of youth, as a woman she was thin, her collarbones were jutting, her elbows were a weapon, her hip bones stuck out just a bit in front, of stature she was short although her legs were fair with curves that were entrancing, other curves were modest but still pleasing in their unwrought state, her back was small in keeping with her frame but gave illusion it was long since she was a wisp around the waist, she had the loveliest of napes, when she put her hair up her neck was devastating, in body she was lithe with the tone of one who does not need to exercise to stay in shape, when she felt coquettish she lowered her chin and looked up, sultry-eyed, playful without smiling, or stood on one leg with her foot tucked abreast her passage, with an undercurrent of solemnity, and it was this that told our hero take me now you fool; he passionately did. She had a pleasant singing voice and danced to beat the night. In sport she had no interest but O did she love well, in rooms, in cars, and on pastoral ground. More than her art, which was formidable, made from found objects, and invited into galleries, her gift was organizing people, it turned out. She did it well, it took her to the halls of power.
His hair was sandy, long on top, the fashion of the day, it was straighter then but for a cowlick at the front that swept it off the other way, his eyes were aqua verdant, changing with the day or with the color shirt he wore, his smile was crooked as there’d been no money to get braces, his nose was narrow, turned up at the end, his cheeks were pocked and new ones were still forming, his facial hair was sparse, thick only at the upper lip and chin, his hairline was acceptable but wouldn’t always be, his frame was thin, which would persist, he reached the average height with shoes on, he was wiry but unmuscled and had a few big moles, everything was functioning but not impressive, naught was broken as of yet, he could not run fast but trained at running far, competing in 5k’s, and recording his best mile in 5:09, he was straight-edge then, but couldn’t hit anything besides a straight pitch, couldn’t ollie but was good at bmx, at his best could touch the bottom of the backboard, had a jumper and a layup but couldn’t read the moving people in a game and floundered in team settings, he should’ve been in chess club, been learning how to code, but now is not the time for recrimations, it’s the trumpeting of youth, when legs were restless when he sat, and boredom was unbearable. His life happened in a frenzy, swept along the currents of emotion, not yet drinking at the font of love, but his was one whose stories came to life, capable of dreaming up reality.
Hero and Leander came together in the woods, upon the terra, in a secluded clearing, in the summer between school, shaded from the heat by lush deciduous, soft clover leaves their bedding, and when a breeze came up and stirred the branches, for a moment the bright and cheery sun backlit her hair, and she was wearing white though wearing nothing much at all, then fantasy was wrenched from them, reality eclipsed it, and she saw his highest self revealed in the lighted glean upon his face, bordered by the verdure, and she heard the finches trilling at a drawn-in distance, and the rustling of Queen Anne’s lace was like a sea that shushed upon them, and above this sound was their excited breathing, he felt the paroxysm from her and let go, for what he was she loved him and he for whom she was, and such was this connection-merging that the gods raised up a tempest, it trickled only to their lips and slaked their thirst, so the constructs sent the demon Hunger, but Nature put a berry patch right there, sweet and full that stained their fingers red and gave them import. Then all the world withdrew, the shudder happened both at once, in the very same held breath. Look! It is still going, you can see it, just up there.
San Bruno, California
2019-2020