for vicki who loves this poem for the best reason ever: just does...
<•>
read a thousand love stories,
pause, rest awhile,
read ten thousand more,
and then deny equality.

If you ask for no more than you can give,
you ask for not enough

love is imbalance not an equation,
with a single solution

love has both constants and variable factors

so you write of tribulations and tributes
so you write of lamentations and liftings

you think you are on the same page
perhaps
but do we not all read at different paces?

one of you is solid, one is dotted and dashed
one of you is straight, one is bent, forever curving

when you think you are
in balance
in the same place
in syncopation

perhaps you are for a moment
a calculus of one point on a trajectory

and you say I can only ask for what I give
and am given
and no more,
you have miscalculated

this flux
flummoxed
when the old terrain is flayed flat
but thru the windshield you see the
plateau ends, the geography unknown,

when you see unknown
when you seek the unknown
when you give from places you did not know
you had to give from
when you kiss a hand
for  twenty minutes more than than the one minute you intended
when you give more than is asked
when you ask for more than you can you think you can give
the imbalance that  is the only concert
the imbalance that is the the only constant

how do I know this?

what are my credentials?

you are not a teenage girl,
what matters of what you know, recall of these matters?

I am who I am
a diversity of man and manner;
I am past prime and in decline
but this I know
for having failed ten thousand poem times
you must ask for more than one can give

but that's not fair!

silly one, still wretched confused,
even after one hundred thousand poem times

you must ask of
yourself
more than you can give
and ask no less
demand no less

a body in emotion is not a body in rest
when the imbalance is too great or insufficient

then you write a poem
look in the mirror that cannot lie
and move
on
or
move off

  begin to ask
yourself
to whom may I give myself
more than is asked.
then you have finally asked
the correct solution to the
unsolvable equation
---

~~~
everything i am given to me by the worst of all
everything i do reminding me
the times i've loved
and the times i've lived
blowing up in my face
again and again telling me to give up
but i don't want to, i'll try to survive
how can i, when everything screams in my presence
when everyone, including me, hates me
what can i do to live with this
the pain i've endured
and the mistakes i've made
how can i repeat these and continue on
like nothing happened
but it did
and that won't change
~~~