You had to be me
talking **** about Aristotle
then finding him in the poem on the next page.
We had been talking about how rhetoric makes students of analysis
feel like they live in some intelligent matrix.

You had to be me
to know that was very topical at that time in my life.
To know what wild bewilderment meant
at it’s actual size.
Two eyes, about the size of spare change, must of been going crazy,
but I couldn’t know unless I was you.

You had to be me
to feel as if you were enclosed in open space
feeling simultaneously,

empty objects come to life.
Tugging at the connections in mind
I was bound to make because of where
those same mechanical hands
had already fostered me.

Making me think something like god
could be construction lights over my exit sign
creating a tunnel out of the kind of darkness
night tells tired protagonists
exists to make you stronger.

You had to be me
to know that strength is a metric of preparedness,
and preparedness is a metric of memory.
I forgave mine.
I only know an instant,
the past shrinks under the weight of my experience
like a shivering body
under a bed sheet.

My strength dreams quiet fists and
sweats from voracious hips.
Unlike the stories,
the night has made me a tender man.
Unlike the stories,
that’s ok.
I’m dying just as fast as any hero with much more romance.