Musical

I want to turn the music back on, walk once more around the circle, and then shove away the kid who has been hovering over you.

I take it back. You’re not the chair, you’re not the children shoving for a spot, you’re the music, and when he hits the switch I’m left standing, trying to remember the melody.

I don’t like this game. I want to hold your hand, but the ring gets in the way.

-Anon.

Love Remembered

I’m sitting here thinking of you, you’re 1,000 miles away and perhaps at this moment you are pouring coffee for your customers, maybe you’re in your room on your bed with our cat and you’re listening to your itunes on shuffle and our song, “The Crane Wife” by The Decembrists, the song we sang to each other in the car on our way to San Francisco, on our way to Joshua Tree, on our way to breakfast in Silverlake, on my scooter with your arms clasped tightly around my waist, our song comes on.

Will you think of the scooter, will you think of your legs wrapped around me on the kitchen counter as we’re sprouting chick peas and hacking up coconuts in our booty shorts with the ocean breeze drifting through our giant living room window and tustling our hair?

Or will you think of when I woke up that February evening with my hands bound in restraints and stitches in my arms and a tube down my throat, as I ask you where I am, you say a hospital, I say a hospital hospital or a mental hospital. You say, a hospital hospital.

Will you remember me drunk and flirting with ____ at gay pride as I held your hand? Will you think about holding hands and talking about art and love and life next to the abandoned town that was invaded by purple butterflies?

Will you think of when I stole a first kiss in the basement of the LACMA? What about when we got drunk on pomegranate saki martinis on Sawtelle and I convinced you to sleep with me, even though I was dating ____ at the time?

You came down to me, you put a mix cd and some pencils in the mail, took a deep breath, and drove down to a future in LA as my girlfriend.

We were off living our lives and trying so hard to just be happy, just feel comfortable being ourselves around other people, and then we ran into each other.

Someone made you do a double take, someone pursued you, someone was interested in you, someone wanted to hear what you thought about, someone wanted to take off your clothes, and you thought that someone was beautiful. You wanted to kiss that someone, you wanted to sit on a bluff at your school and eat rice bowls and talk to this someone. It took a furious living of life for years, but you came together.

And you fell in love, real love, it took a lot of struggles, and a lot of pain, and a lot of heartache, and a lot of disappointment and anger and resentment and fear throughout the years, but there was a time when you were legitimately, completely, in love. That love was the most powerful feeling in the world, that love made you feel like you self- actualized, and then something took it away. Life took away.

There was nothing wrong with your love, I mean maybe there were probems, there always are, maybe there were fights and lies and tears and jealousies, but there was still love, it was still the most powerful, all encompassing experience of your entire life, and now it’s over.

You probably both acknowledged that life was getting in the way, really neither one of you wanted it to end, it’s just that one of you realized life was too much, life was tearing you apart.

You had to be alone, there was no other way, you had to re-learn how to be you, a better you, so you wouldn’t punch someone in the face, so you wouldn’t black out and tell them to go fuck themselves, so you wouldn’t get drunk and flirt with other girls, so you wouldn’t try to kill yourself again. So you could be a better lover, a truer lover, a stronger lover, a happier lover, a real lover.

But will you ever meet someone to love like that, someone who could make you feel what you felt as you huddled your naked body with your lover’s, trying to stay warm in a cold, lonely world?

You are alone now. You have to be alone to be a lover again. Someday when you’re strong and the time is right you will be a lover again, you will find a lover again.

But how can you be sure, what if the one love you felt was the best love ever? What if no one else can make you feel that way ever again?

I say to you, broken lover, Heaven sends and Heaven takes, love is sufficient unto love, let your lover go, go back into the world and learn to love again. Smile when your journey bumps you into someone else who is just as beautiful and broken as you, and be happy that there is love.

-Anon.

Your Laugh

I spend my nights
Hunched over small pieces of paper
Fragments of the day I’ve collected
Things I think might make you laugh

Your laugh is unique
It’s loud and sharp and beautiful
You cover your mouth, barely controlling it
It’s fuel

I work until dawn, burning the midnight oil.
Refining my lines
Hoping they’ll hit you just right
A giggle gusher.

Anon.

Eloisa to Abelard

Sent by a friend:

http://www.monadnock.net/poems/eloisa.html

“Abelard and Eloise flourished in the twelfth centruy; they were two of the most distinguished persons of their age in learning and beauty, but for nothing more famous than for their unfortunate passion. After a long course of calamities, they retired each to a several convent, and consecrated the remainder of their days to religion. It was many years after this separation that a letter of Abelard’s to a friend, which contained the history of his misfortune, fell into the hands of Eloisa. This awakening all her tenderness, occasioned those celebrated letters (out of which the following is partly extracted) which give so lively a picture of the struggles of grace and nature, virtue and passion.”

Remember, Love?

being in love
what was it? i couldn’t remember
smile lights me up inside
the world fades out around us
mixed and problematic
find me curled up with imagination
wondering if I’ll ever have
even half of what I’m longing for now

-Anon.