Here I am twenty years old smoking cigarettes alone at a public city park sometime around 9 00 PM. There is a drunken homeless man or woman, I cannot tell, staring intently at me from a distance. My oversized-sweater covered back slouched toward the bike riders and family walkers of the night. My mouth tastes of melancholy and syrup. I made love here once before with a boy I never truly loved. It is possible to make love to another human body without taking off your clothes. It is possible to love the idea of a person more than the person himself. Herself. Ourselves. That’s the thing about love, that’s the thing about words. They are used so frequently, so effortlessly, so abundantly; they’ve come to lose much meaning. Meaning. What does meaning even mean? Everything and nothing make sense. Should I be ashamed of myself for having read more poems from Charles Bukowski than Psalms and scriptures from the HOLY BIBLE? Should I be disappointed in myself for genuinely not caring for the pursuit of a higher education? I don’t even want to be a writer anymore. Is it sad that I don’t have the same flame of desire as I did when I was seventeen? Yet, I still want so much. I still want it all. To be happy to be alive to be healthy to be mad to be in-love to be inspired to feel wild to feel on the edge of so much greatness to be beautiful to be broken to be fixed to be passionate to be young to be it all to feel it all. Everything. Every emotion every word every color every flavor every sound every sight all things unseen the haunted the past the future love love love *** faith sin sadness sadness hollow burning lovely days nights evenings mornings cities people their stories glory hunger thirst satisfaction. I want to live in dissatisfaction until it’s driven me to the point of maddening bliss. I don’t know what I want. I never have. I never will. How am I to say, really? It could be enough to just have my hand held by yours. It could be enough to listen to each other through silence. It could be enough to feel the wandering breeze of summer wind coquettishly linger through my ***** autumn hair. It could be enough to capture my distorted anxiety on blue-lined wide-ruled yellow sheets of paper. It could be enough to have what means most to my heart taken away without return. It could be enough to sit here in solitude, by choice, as I am doing---and allow myself to be taken away as well by the mysteries of the sky, the moon, the clouds and the odd noises of the night. Perhaps, we are just as simple as we are torn. We are more. We are everything and nothing all at once. Elope with me through thought.
Close your eyes, forget your name. Here, we’ll never die.
Here, we’ll never live. Just you and I --- here.
A modern intimacy.