Sweet Sixteen Years

<••>

had to get the calculator
cause this brain refused
this math,

2024 - 2008 ‎ = 16

yearlong furlongs
a dustance existential
impossibility:

She selected me from the
millions of riffraf looking
for a living romantic love,
which perhaps while
not a complete miracle,
but something, that had
been as elusively beautiful
as a running back shedding
11 tacklers and well,
scoring a touching down
(n.b. it’s a Sunday)

a touchdown elusive
and once thought,
a deluded inconclusive
belief from the realm of
music and poetry,
an aberrant belief
in a life of mundane
and oft much pain

that periodically stubbed
one’s toes with streaks of
sparks, but never was carded
for one who had not
learned
the definition
of longer
lasting,
open ended,
unimaginable,
genuine
to expect, believe
that it was a
validity,
nothing but a
legal fiction
never to be a word in
my finishing diminishing
vocabulary

there will be no candlelight
dinner, no popping corks,
no mad jewelry hidden in refrigerator,
maybe just some
outshine lemonade icicle popsicles,
a modest treat
for an e-xtra oh-never-ordinary
travelogue with no final
destination penned in
blue-black ink

for the record:

she picked me out,
she came late to
our first date,
and fully agreed
on a third date,
that commitment
was a pressure
neither desired,
agreeing with a
hearty high five

so here she is,
always a present,
always an available
sujet for one more
onlylovepoem
to scribe, and
complain
how a poet goes
on and on and on

which is a reminder to self
to quit writing too much
when there is still a
tomorrow to add to this
poem

the lyrics intimate, me inside recognized,
and I find it hard to believe,
not to recall my chest actual
aching from a lost love, a busted
heart,that my family physician told
me not a thing  to be done, and time
the only known cure and that was
only twenty five years,
a just short “long time ago”

but there is no such a thing as time
when the wounded heart is pierced fierce, there is no round the bend visible to tell
you, love will come again; and you’re so
cautious,  won’t trust, to open, but irony it’s
the only way to find it one mo’ time, to
give yourself up in whole, not just parts,
and you “discover” writing poetry helps,
and a new life long habit is forming that is a kind of meds that you disburse to oneself

later be
this song below, Bonnie Raitt
makes you ache with her rendition
keeping no secret she’s been there truly

used to look to ascribe fault, but learned,
t’was a time waster, more accurate, each
of us had our own fault lines, dormant,
till not, and when the lines touched and connect, it was an earthquake off the scale,
and the tremors just keep on coming

but the chest ache was so intense, close
my eyes, and relive it,  and makes me
feel kinder, more human, less angry? more forgiving cause there is no mark of Cain
on someone’s forehead to indicate that
one is suffering the aftermath, the aftershocks, of this loss, so be patient
when encountering a human who sighs
out loud often, as often as as
every breath

listen to the song, it will untie your chords,
maybe making some memories resurface,
for better as it is part of writing
only love poetry

the best time to realize
when
what
causes one to experience
the meaning of to be
deathly afraid
is
exactly
when
you are not


joy purifying
enfolds you, envelops, indeed,
you
are subsumed, a sense of being
secondary
to the unusual flooding of the
dry riverbed in your head that’s
been dry since you can’t remember

when

when you understand
that one cannot truly
write only love poetry
to precise excess
unless
admittedly you love
to excess,
otherwise
you are incapable of making
good
love poems

when

you are not
within that
rare off the beaten yes trackless meniscus curve,
in
country
of first love
  of
only
true love