there are two types of girls,
or so I was told:
church girls and
bad girls, and my mother
said this with such finality it was
clear they were mutually exclusive.

of course,
you know this is
Not True;
you once characterized yourself as
"the type of 'church girl' to light a
blunt in the bathroom (just sayin)" and
that single quote says more about you than
all this fragile wording, this silica dust
heated and wrought into intricacies and
metaphor and conceit.
You
are far more than
a bad girl,
are far more than
a church girl,
will never be
my girl
and this is how it should be.
you are not
to be domesticated
a la Robin Thicke; you are
uncontrollable, your lust and
disdain for monogamy
twin hurricanes, destroying
New Orleans in a heartbeat and
rendering FEMA
impotent in the next.

there are two types of girls:
other girls, and
You.

The overwhelming burden of the lover, unloved
who stood ignorantly before digitus paternae dexterae,
the breath of God, the breath into the first man and life--
--he remains untouched, unmoved.
Deaf to the peal of even the sweetest bell.

He who failed to gently crest the curve of
a woman's sweet breast, the warm hollow of her hip,
the valley of her spine, the cusp of her lips;
with a heavy, innocent hand.
He whose love could crush rib and lung,
not with body, but with clumsy word.
She inhales sharply ******* for air.

A weak man who waits, albeit patiently,
for his worries to resolve themselves--
a dead white headstone, somber and unyielding.
She, the pulsing ember, could not thrive on such rotten wood.

you *******, with your
smirk and your bow tying fingers and your
****** classic fu-cking rock music:
who let you in here, to lumber
about the lambs like
Putin and Crimea ??
why do you bother
introducing sophomores to
Oedipus and pronouncing the
center O (like it
******* matters; linguistics are
more organic than
carbon-based chemistry) or
teaching seniors of
Two Vast & Trunkless Legs of Stone
standing alone in the desert,
artifice of arrogance just as
graduation and self-congratulatory
partying and revelry and diploma-framing.

I think I know:
masochism is your middle name, and
maybe, after all, it is worth it,
when a collegiate who barely remembers
your face and never remembered
the color of your eyes, or his homework,
name drops Hemingway and Faulkner
to a college professor, blossoming an
argument, and later, a companionship.

maybe, after all, it is worth it.

S-P-A-R-T-A-N-S
this chant has been
emblazoned on your prefrontal cortex for
years yet, and you'll bear it
upon your chest for years yet and
yet: you aren't certain
what it's all meant, whether it's been
Worth Your Time
and in this way, cheerleading has become
stand-in for
every boy who's let you down
month after month after month.

too bad you can't
unlearn their habits or
unfire the synapses they triggered;
too bad you can't
hop in a delorean to
unwind the time you spent with them.

but if you could:
would you?

paint on callused fingertips,
paint dyeing German beer,
paint flickering fluttering trembling
across bare canvas skin as you
finesse, ink and watercolor at your
whim while you work. you are no
Caravaggio, much more a Gentileschi,
but Michelangelo himself would be
awed by your radiance, the subtle
art of your face and
brushstrokes of your curves,
spine sinuous undulating while you
dance for him.

I've been begging for you
to tell me something new for
months upon months, to tell me
that you are not the same,
that you cannot stand me,
that "I love you" was the Great Lie;
but you will not no never
you're too good for something so
base as hate or someone so
base as me but
you're still here and I
love you
and hate myself for it.

you are a child
opening presents at 6:34 PST on a
Sunny Christmas morn in PASADENA, CA
while her parents look on in
feigned interest
razor scooter abandoned amid
crushed scrunched wrapping paper as you
tear apart a box of Legos
for the plasticky viscera contained therein.

you are a teen,
finding marijuana at 15:34 CST under a
bed in BOULDER, CO
while your parents shout at your brother
feigning sympathy
simply to ****** it back
and you are wrenching open ziplock
to swallow a chunk of his stash
and you find yourself
enamored with the aroma.

you are a woman,
fighting for equality at 10:26 EST wielding
picket sign (paint and sharpie on cardboard) and megaphone in
MANHATTAN, NY
while your parents
turn over in their graves,
uncertain what you are
fighting for.

oh
honey, with your
butter cup smile and your
butter pecan hair, you're
bound to make me fall
in love with you sometime.
too bad, because it's
evident that would be awful
on both sides. for me,
because you would not
reciprocate; for you,
because you could not
reciprocate; c'est
la vie, ma chérie, trop méchant
et n'est pas sympa
mais Dieu t'aide, tu
l'adore.