Droplets
On windows
And on skin;
Telltale translucency
Are you
A window as well
With a chance of opening?

You are a bleeding romantic.
Ever so ready to fall in a love pool but
alarmingly lazy when swimming out of it because you have grown accustomed to its strange warmth

You want to capture a moment, and keep it to yourself but your eyes are not lenses.
Your eyes, in stead, see the magic beyond surfaces and the truth behind the incomplete enigma-that is a man's heart.
And like young Einstein, you wish to pull the broken pieces together

Countless Einstein hearts, much like yours, wail from the lost underworld. And a few, like mine, that have managed the incredible feat of escape, wish to never return to the underground.
I perceive you are different;
Unscathed by the pain and the loss, you wish to return.

I read your heart in a noisy room the other day, and I dare say, when words cut you or when your heart breaks,
you don't bleed like us,
you bleed romance.

They stand with their hands in their pockets.
One man adjusts his mesh cap, an excuse.
Something tiny, precious, real bleeps furiously through cargo khakis.
He types expertly with one finger and smiles chapped lips to himself.
Leaning against the uneven coffee counter, he reaches for his latte
and walks out the door with his fashion twin and best work friend:
grown men who assimilate in substandard choices to fit-in
years past high school.

( i )

I lucked out
on table 4 last night
window seat
baseboard heat
with intimate passages
from Ginsberg
in his purest
and most evident form

Cover-all Carl was draped
in his usual garb
(turning pages
of yesterday's news)
animating, culturing, bantering
on the fate of the
Greek barber
(in an accent of which
I'm not so sure)

His cronies
looked on
(with a twisted conviction)
countering
with their own tales
of ingovernance and woe
did you know that Panasonic
lost 5 billion last quarter?

The evening moved
in time lapse...
with painted winds,
streaming lights
and a host of
high school girls
running cold

Maleah passed
on her late shift
(checking the pile and trough),
patronized the boys
and called it a night

( ii )

The bald man
is back at it again
bickering at the till
(something about
a cold free coffee
or 99 cents
or the coloured guy
behind him who got it hot)
a kind Filipino
is trying to get it done
(at 8 bucks per)
losing her cool
and shedding a quiet tear

Wonder what the Purewals
or Haitians or Cossacks
would have to say
about this grim public reminder,
wonder what
this sad f*ck
will do tonight...
without his
bus pass
or sling sack
or broken Turkish stems

to observe the observer
is to love and to serve her

as her bottom lip secedes from the top,
i still my thoughts til they stop

To belong to the observer
is to long observe her

It is to experience her analysis,
brushing her hair in wait for her synthesis

Covered in logic and reason
her critique or thought comes out
and though it can bring painful change in season
hearing it is the only righteous route

To listen to the observer
is to be challenged by her

to take her challenge is to listen with humble ears
to take her challenge is to gain wisdom for years

This is what it means to love and to hold her
to observe my beautiful, sweet observer

Since life is not always easy
and abject failure is abundant
your gaze may begin to capture
ideas beyond the finishing touches of beauty
and your thoughts may start to fall
off the planes of (what is considered) “sanity”

at such tumultuous hours my friend
look to the trees not the flowers

I still have hopes.

You stare at your book through your circular spectacles— carob eyes hinted with specks of caramel hidden within the fragile glass as your fingers daintily flip through the parchment-colored pages. Your pearly teeth sinks mildly onto your bottom lip, lightly chewing on the soft flesh as your eyes trace every word. With your nose crinkling, your cheeks rubicund, and your messy hair slightly falling just before your eyes; I realized that you were such a wonderful thing to observe so thoroughly, and I realized that maybe, just maybe, I was falling for you harder than I intended to.

I still have hopes that I may be able to tell you how beautiful you are; how you seem so oblivious of my admiration for you— but for now, I could only stare at you and drown in the thoughts of not being able to call you mine.

I put the paper in the printer every day
I put the paper in the printer every way
When the ink run low
And they jam the envelope
The boss man call me up and then he say

MARIA! MARIA! THE INK RUN LOW
MARIA! MARIA! I JAM THE ENVELOPE
MARIA! MARIA! I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO
JUST PUT THE PAPER IN THE PRINTER AND THEN I PAY YOU