#firstadventuresinadolescentheartbreak
Musk. Wind
whispers mysteries in the form of it;
it thickens thin air until it turns black,
black enough to
hush. Wind,
being black, absorbs your thoughts,
makes violent curls of them; thickens,
thickens thin air until it
transmogrifies
into pages and pages
stained black with disaster-
as if a hurricane crumpled
those could-have been white aeroplanes, potential
papered to fly, and flung them
into the pit of your mind to
sink
deeper
and
deeper
and
deeper
until
your poems were written and the casualties numbered:
each line a suicide of a thought that could have been,
each syllable ink-stained and bloodied black
by artistic integrity, or madness: the same.
This wind is your hair.
This wind is your territory.
Not mine. Never could I have met you here,
in this place
of your solitary being: where real poets exist.
I am not a hurricane: and I am not your disaster.
I have learnt and re-learnt how useless it is to define you
in terms of myself; how useless it is to define you
at all. A rationalist like me can never truly understand
what it is to be part of your endlessness, the sheer
mountainous immensity that constitutes your thrill.
Yes,
your hair fascinates me as much as any ancient,
spiralling, far-away Andromeda- but the fact
that even now, I've already tried to limit you
with words
shows the absoluteness, the solidity,
the density
of my misunderstanding of your... your...
And
real poets know that rationalists are fools.
You know
I am a fool.
I write these meagre verses
with unreachably cold computer technologies
thinking
that these words could somehow save us. Yet,
simultaneously,
I am some drunken nuisance knocking
vehemently
at your door, who turns and strolls
away
right before you finally
answer.
I am a fool
going home and seeing clouds
in the darkness. It is my first
time seeing them in the sky. First
time in nearly a month.
The moon illuminates the clouds,
and so do
the towers of highway lights in the middle of two roads.
One road leads forward, the other backwards.
As the car passes the towers,
the two lamps attached to each of their heads glow.
They streak on as the car speeds on homewards.
They leave fading tails like shooting stars, except they do not travel.
They are stagnant mind lights, peripheral memories; unmythical,
artificial.
They are not like you.
When I pass you,
You....
You...
You.
Please,
never believe-
for even a whisper of musk
to yourself;
for even a black hush,
to yourself;
for even one sliver, one strand
of Andromeda hair, falling
towards yourself-
that
Grahamstown
didn't mean anything less than Eternity to me.
It does.
I am not a hurricane. I am not your disaster.
You are far too much of yourself
for me to be even a zephyr
to you.
Jul 29, 2015
Jul 29, 2015 at 2:58 PM UTC
Prometheus gave fire
to humanity and had
his innards guzzled
by vultures for it.
You gave me the sun
and I
unduly set myself
wholly
to the task of tearing
apart your insides.
Top to bottom, I stripped you
strip you,
will strip you
of all that makes you you and
I don't know how to stop
turning your yellow
to orange
to purple
to black
like my innards too. See,
I too once gave fire
to people and lovers and friends and
then
I set myself to the task of
tearing up apart
those various necessities that made me
me. Things like basic human kindness.
Simple rules like don't
involve yourself with so many girls
that you lose count while never losing
count. That sort of
thing, y'know.
Do you know how long I've been
trying to write you a poem called
Darjeeling? I've been trying for
so long that I drink coffee now.
I've been trying for so long that
when the restaurant menu finally
reads 'Darjeeling tea' for so and so
price, I don't pay it and order
some mediocre hot-chocolate instead
(and even a Strawberry milkshake. What
does that say about me, I wonder?).
It was lukewarm. It didn't scald
my tongue like you did.
I suppose it never will.
Jul 29, 2015
Jul 29, 2015 at 12:04 PM UTC
Clementine deleted Joel
from her mind. Joel tried to
forget her; he couldn't, so
he got rid of her too. You
try, I know, to get rid of me. I
try, you know, to pretend that
the world isn't spinning so fast
in the hope
that we will fall of its spinning-top edge
and stumble, clumsily, gracelessly, into
each other. We're spinning so fast with it-
the world- so this is unlikely, so we both
pretend that it's an accident when we fall
into each other,
again and again, as
We play spin the bottle while
The world spins instead.
Suddenly.
Now that that same world has stilled itself for
us: we don't know what to do without its
rotationary madness angling us
towards old age and crumpets (together?). That
same world has stilled itself until
tomorrow when that same world will spill
itself out from day to night to day again
as we take our respective first drafts
of our poems written about each other
and
Edit.
out that same mad spin
that made us
us
just like
Joel and Clementine forgot-
on purpose. We forget, on purpose
with purpose
but,
we'll still meet each other in Montauk where
that same world will still itself
as we wrap our fingers around each other's
fingers
in the cold
where you might finally reciprocate
my lacklustre
confessions.
You too,
right?
Jul 29, 2015
Jul 29, 2015 at 11:24 AM UTC
From a distance,
planets look just like particles:
you can't see them.
So when I disappear
into the edge of the sky,
maybe
we won't orbit each other
so much.
Maybe
you'll sleep without my
gravity
while knowing how small
I am,
but still a small
part of you
like a particle
which might be or have been
a planet.
Jul 4, 2015
Jul 4, 2015 at 4:36 PM UTC
Madness. Stark raving madness.
Leaping flames of the mind. Gently licking
at the heart. Blood set on fire, brought
slowly to a boil. Madness. Stark. Raving.
Madness.
The conversation simmered as such:
"Don't be dramatic."
Is this how we go about
pretending we are shocked
when people cut themselves shoot themselves
hang themselves end themselves when
they are told to simmer as such:
"Don't be dramatic."?
Drama is my eye sockets bleeding
heavily at paper-crumbled past midnight.
But of course I cannot do that.
I cannot bring myself to bleed.
Drama is my hands effortlessly
clutching a neck- any neck, I don't care whose-
and squeezing until my eye sockets bleed.
But of course I cannot do that.
Drama is not a breathless exasperation
when suddenly a wave of the same old
same old begs to drown you again
and once again you must pick up a pen
to survive. Darjeeling you
tire me oh so very much. You hate me
oh so very much I think. You...
No, me
and my madness. Stark. Raving.
Madness.
Which I can't let happen again
because apparently dramatic is
being able to barely
take my next breath
and wondering why
respiration in a classroom
should be a mountain climb.
May 30, 2015
May 30, 2015 at 6:38 AM UTC
Bathtub music and drums played on the surface
of Davy Jones's mirror: the ceramic holds
the sea, the sea, and all within it: ***** me.
Scrubbed you off my skin again for
the umpteenth night in a row. Row
row row our boat away from the constant,
constant rows. Stormy arguments and
weathered mistrust. You'll break me,
won't you? I'll break you, won't I? Won't you
come drown with me Ariel? Won't you
come up with me to the kitchen and lock up
the door then lock up the oven then lock up
ourselves in carbon-monoxide poetry?
But then how does cooking gas end up as sass
in a library? How did sustenance turn into
asphyxiation? Why are our hands on
each other's throats instead of being binded
by the absoluteness, the certainty, the assuredness
of palms within palms and fingers interlocked
and question marks dispelled.
Splash! as way in and over my head
is the bathtub music
and my absorbent curls are
drinking, drinking, drinking, thinking
about the why you only call me when
you're drinking, drinking, drinking; thinking
about the way I cannot suppress you when
the cellphone has long gone quiet and
your Hughes of blue are still loud but
your red is dead.
Ariel, Ariel,
I want to be your dark-haired prince.
Ariel, Ariel,
my country is landlocked but I still see you in the sink.
Ariel, Ariel,
gurgling away as the bathtub music fades
into ugly brown rings around the ceramic
pause button
that shows no hope of continuation
Ariel, Ariel, you are the final splash!
as the false sea drifts away, the final splash!
that scatters bathtub music past the drain
and into the air. Ariel, Ariel,
you are the false rain
that my landlocked country never prayed for.
Ariel, Ariel, toneless, begotten and forgotten
Ariel, Ariel. I cannot sing for you. I cannot.
You will not sing for me. You will not.
The final splash! past the drain and into the air
is you Ariel. The false rain.
The rain song of our endless games.
May 24, 2015
May 24, 2015 at 10:02 AM UTC
My eyes are a constant glitter when such dreams
pop up. It's nice to feel that way again, still,
after the endless march of time separates the wheat
from the chaff. Guess which one am I:
the one that doesn't get exported, which makes sense
because
My eyes are a constant glitter when such dreams
pop up. It's nice to feel that way again, still,
after the endless march of time...
And what exactly is that glitter?
Stars? Ghosts? Memories?
Or the final flicker of a bedroom light bulb.
Or the last swipe of now-dark screen.
Or a distant goodnight from chaff to
wheat; fertile land to barren desert, yet
still planting himself to the irrigated seas
of Spring, where burning sun was still growth
and when one looked forward to growing up
like this.
Winter has never felt so warm.
Nor wheat and chaff so warm
and and
like the thoughts of you and me.
May 13, 2015
May 13, 2015 at 7:35 PM UTC
I keep wondering if what I did was okay.
If it's okay for me to take so much of you
into my left hand, then my right hand and
squeeze, and feel two motherly dots in your centres.
I wonder if it's okay for me to grasp
at your smoothness so much, from head to toe,
**** to ******* heart to lips; and breathe
all over you: I'm scared
of it. I'm scared
of you,
of me,
of us,
your moans,
the dark,
my moans,
the light,
the day,
the night.
It all frightens me, and I wonder if it's okay
to have suddenly grown up in the ludicrous
space of time it took to leave two obvious bruises
on your neck. I'm scared that your parents
will actually send you (back) to India but laugh
because I'm sure they won't- you applied foundation
to blot out my purple lust scars.
Love bites they call them.
Love...
I'm wondering if what you did was okay.
If it's okay for you to take so much of me;
every non-penetrative, ridiculous, amateur
****** and every saliva strand. Every whisper
of afro-hair that falls out of your hand-combs,
and your tongue, which -my God- is now mine.
I said I picked you, I pick you, but here,
bodies somehow body,
you are me.
Innocence lost
is when a short skirt
represents a different type of freedom.
And my hands under there,
is my best worst decision yet.
Apr 24, 2015
Apr 24, 2015 at 4:11 PM UTC
.
I.
When the poet first met her, again,
Cupid tried to strike him with an arrow.
It missed because the poet stared
through her. Not at her.
Yesterday it was,
'Get online loser.'
Tonight she says: quick
give me a description of Paris.
She always says such things.
He says: cold
like the pin-prick
of morning after-skin. Warm
like the shiver of a hand
held soft; of lips kissed.
He always says such things.
He even calls her Honeybear,
Cupid be ******
II.
He liked her because she read more books than him.
Her voice always made the sound of a page turned:
Crisp, clear, passionate;
revelling in the present,
but always waiting for the next sentence.
As if a book could actually speak
like a person.
As if the hours
she spent reading alone were not
just conversations with herself.
As if every syllable
was a night-whisper with
the great American dead.
The poet doubted if she ever
truly talked to Fitzgerald because
he was a drunk too obsessed
with one spirit. She'd get annoyed.
But then again, her drink of choice
is also an ungraspable green light.
Paris.
III.
When she put on her spectacles,
the world became less clearer:
she could only see how far away she was
from where she was supposed to be.
The sharper life's images were,
the surer she became of this.
She had her substitutes for foreign oxygen:
novels, movies, songs, poems;
but they never quite breathed the same.
He tried to force the glasses off her.
Maybe then she could more barely
make out the thorny edges of sun-dried Acacias,
and more fuzzily the general sun-warmth
that he thought was the Kgalagadi soul.
She refused, but when she didn't,
she wore contact lenses. Real,
or imagined, the thin sheet of
dream glass pressed against her eyes
could never disappear. Her soul
was where it was: where it wasn't.
So still all she could see,
even when he smiled vivid,
was a place that wasn't Paris.
IV.
Somewhere.
That is where she thought she was.
Here, an indescribable place.
Indescribable because she saw it grey. He
instead saw dappled speckles,
and rainbows flickering across every corner.
But he was of here and here alone, he felt
the landscape's beauty in his bones. She
wondered why she should look at
sandy semi-desert instead of gravelled
culture. She wanted pathway upon pathways of
old Europe, lingering in modern cafés and bistros
like an affectionate aftertaste. He
was happy with spoonfuls of instant coffee with
translated copies of a country he would never see.
To him, a French poet in English
was just about the same as a
French poet in French.
He knew that wasn't true, of course.
But the point was to get across the idea of
a Little Paris in his Somewhere. Just as he had an
idea of her in the movies she shared; where
she would awkwardly appear as bits and pieces
of dialogue, sceneries, soundtracks and end-credits
injected into his laptop weekends atop his bed.
He knew her as old romance films on USBs.
It wasn't quite her, but he still liked the idea of it.
He liked ideas, and ideas alone
were more than enough for him.
To her, ideas were restless things
to be beaten into submission.
And so she endlessly beat life's piñata
with a stick of dream,
and hoped to find a plane ticket
amongst the false candies.
She's still swinging.
V.
He couldn't stop her and he didn't try.
At the very least, he admired her charm;
the zest and gusto of her swing.
But she tired easily. And he didn't want
her to be tired.
Sometimes her laughter would burst into her
and she'd forget about ambition, forget about success.
Sometimes she would just bite into her own sweetness
like if a rose could smell itself. She loved her red,
and was more intimate with her petals than her pulse.
Just as how she knew Paris better
than this Somewhere.
He thought she was crazy.
But so did she.
And they argued about this because
She thought he was crazy.
But so did he.
And so,
they disagreed about agreement
every day.
On a good day she would present a vicious smile,
the next paragraph in her never-ending thesis
that he doesn't intend to stop reading,
but somehow hasn't even started.
He never will.
On a bad day... well, a bad day
would lead to the end of a verse.
VI.
They would always eventually get over a bad day.
Coldness takes effort; warmth does not.
The knew this, but warmth often became
an uncomfortable singeing of their safety.
They ran at the thought
of such possibilities like tiny girls
from tiny spiders. Neither wanted to put
that eight-legged flame into a jar, but
somehow they both expected butterflies.
The ecosystem is such for good reason,
and that reason is balance.
Spiders and butterflies both constitute
that effortless, life-affirming warmth.
They dance around that truth as it is a bonfire.
Sometimes they even look bright at it. But never,
never do they touch that little Paris, that little flame;
their little flame, their little Paris.
Because that love is meaningless meaning,
and neither of them wants to be, or feel, wrong.
Even if they'd be wrong together.
Their hands never meet in that fire.
Their souls never burn in night's ecstasy.
And they are almost never born,
until tomorrow, when they smile once again,
and dance.
Come online loser.
Apr 4, 2015
Apr 4, 2015 at 5:46 AM UTC
The last thing the Poet feels of her is the distinctive taste of biltong. It lingers. She had bought two packets at the café. Their last kiss is made just before the airplane announces itself with a great roar of being. He watches it swallow her and turn her into a memory. And then the plane flies away. He can’t find a silver lining in the plane’s path, so he instead focuses on the gentle return of normality to his skin. Every centimetre that was previously pressed to his Muse is smoothing its goose bumps. The Poet’s heart goes back from verse to prose, just as how it was before she became the subject of his pen.
He turns to say an awkward “dumela” to the Muse’s grandmother. She responds with the tone of a grandmother greeting a boy who has just been making out with her granddaughter in front her: “dumela.” It probably doesn’t help that his hair isn’t combed. It probably doesn’t help that they have not met before. The Poet then asks the Muse’s brother for a ride to school. Now that the Muse is gone, it is time for him to begin studying for the colourless exams that were the subject of his existence before her. The Muse’s brother nods in agreement, and he walks out of the stale atmosphere of the airport with her family. The summer sunshine somehow manages to feel uninspired.
The journey from the airport stretches out like a goodbye that ought not to happen. It is slow, painful, and filled with empty promises of hope from her family. Her brother says she will visit during the Christmas season. The Poet knows she won’t- she can’t- but he has enough novels to keep him company. They are riding in the same little red Volkswagen that often picked her up from school. If time is simultaneous, she is sitting next to him.
The car is full; time has only one direction, and its wheels stops in front of the school gates.
He says his farewells, closes the car door, and limps to the library to start working on maths equations with his classmates. He barely opens the library doors, barely greets his classmates, and with barely practiced nonchalance, barely explains that his Muse went off to another country. He picks up his scientific calculator and clicks open his pen to attack a math problem. Hours pass in numbers that stubbornly refuse to make sense in place of her. The Poet solves a problem, and then he doesn’t. He asks for help, and then he doesn’t. He laughs with his classmates, and then he doesn't: they have to go home now for lunch.
The Poet cannot go home. He has to wait for his mother to pick him up. He decides to walk out the school gates to eat at the Chinese restaurant. It is placed conveniently outside the school. He orders some dumplings and some noodles, and then tells the waitress that he is going to buy a newspaper at the filling station while he waits for his meal.
At the filling station counter are packets of biltong hooked onto a stand.
Mar 14, 2015
Mar 14, 2015 at 7:16 PM UTC
What good is an olive branch
if used to start a flame?
What good is a dove
if its an enemy plane?
What good are hellos
when taken as goodbyes?
Feb 26, 2015
Feb 26, 2015 at 1:02 PM UTC
He lingered on in the cold,
her voice to his ear;
saving him
from the frostbite of a lonely earth.
All on her own,
all on that phone,
he heard her soft and
held out to reach her
against the bitter cough
of nature’s cold.
His heart his mind it
beats of it,
thinks of it;
them.
And therefore it,
because of it;
he speaks to sleep then.
Feb 22, 2015
Feb 22, 2015 at 4:25 AM UTC
I liked not knowing what to do
and doing it anyway,
without practice, with abandon;
imperfect kissing. Undeserved certainty
laughing out between sharp brace wires.
Did I cut you when I pretended,
for a second, that we were almost,
almost, uninnocent; naked
when I grabbed your leg, then
all of you. Again. Then
again. Then
again.
And then somewhere in that mess of hair,
you breathed
and I thought it was for the first-time
because
that thought made me feel nice,
just like you did.
Again.
Feb 11, 2015
Feb 11, 2015 at 1:26 PM UTC
Believe me when I say that I will float
with you
to eternity and beyond.
But life is finite,
and so are we.
Dec 19, 2014
Dec 19, 2014 at 2:57 PM UTC
I would
I wish
I could
I must
I cannot.
Though, if not,
may I have only
this last glance?
Glimpses into dual starlight, twinkling
milky effervescence with
rings
Of infinite, sonorous brown, towards
deep black holes which
cling,
To these imagined night skies,
I utter my utter soft words
The sun in my closed eyes,
I dream a dream of stars and hurt
Your skies have met my eyes.
Nov 28, 2014
Nov 28, 2014 at 12:34 AM UTC
There was a time when your lips were painted
bright red-
but this was not when you had painted
me goodbye in the car-park, and somehow
left me grey,
as your little red Volkswagen
rolled softly away.
Nov 4, 2014
Nov 4, 2014 at 4:43 PM UTC
Just as how a little stick-man could not perceive the pencil that drew him
I could have never seen God and didn't see him when he had molded me
from His depths of clay, profound as a rock- that is to say still, solid,
silent, cold, old, disquieting... All fancy words for 'not much.'
Here's the point: there isn't any, but
just as how this little stick-man cannot perceive this pencil that draws him
closer and closer to the last panel of his, this, comic or graphic novel:
beings of smaller dimensions know nothing
of those so much higher, smarter, and more poetic than themselves.
Does this have to do with why you disappeared onto an airplane
like a bird searching for her freedom...?
Am I, in this mess of metaphors, your little stick-man who couldn't
get out of his paper sheet and fly with you...?
Of course, in existing on a dried white flap, I could not, cannot, fold
my own two dimensions of existence into even one crumpled paper plane;
so I could not, cannot, follow you through your freeing air
and ask you, or beg you, to answer my silly questions...
Because I have both length and width, but no depth;
no depths of clay.
Though I figure the answers to these questions are the same.
The truth is that, in this mess of metaphors,
neither of us got to pick what we didn't want to be, bird or stick-man.
In reality we had only one choice: to hold hands when we could.
So we did.
And when we did- everything became dimensionless;
and Everything made sense because Nothing did.
Because the value of the distance between our hands
meant that Nothing was our Everything.
And from that dense Nothing our Universe was born-
Bang. Thus tiny strings of new Everything rippled throughout old Nothing...
making Everything matter, almost literally.
We then made our stars, our galaxies, our planets; our classrooms,
lockers, and lovers: each other. All of this brilliant Creation until
we only had one last choice: to hold hands when we could...
...so we did...
... again and again,
in the distant dreams of a troubled theorist
who chains together pages and birds of poetry,
looking to find you, again and again,
in the mess of metaphors
of our Universe,
and I did.
Almost.
Sep 24, 2014
Sep 24, 2014 at 3:05 PM UTC
Google tells me it's an eight hour time difference.
Already absent,
my heart already fonder
for memories we hadn't been able to make yet.
Time is slow. You can sleep, then wake up.
Because of that: I haven't even bat an eyelid yet.
Unblinking in these unholy stretches
of distant poetry where I am God, I
watch our oblivious universe. Make something of it.
Fashion us a happy ending, if you will.
But you're there, and
I'm here.
So...
...would you mind
if we talked
about infinity...
...tonight?
Google tells me it's an eight hour time difference,
so tonight is meaningless to you.
You see the sun, I see the stars.
But who can say
one of us is more blind than the other?
Who is to say what is wrong
and what is right,
when we live in a world
where I, Romeo
and you, Juliet
can commit suicide
when it's both day and night?
Such things are preposterous...
even more so than I pretending to be God
with my pen of hormones and heartbreak...
Who am I to think that I could possibly... make something of it.
Or fashion us a happy ending, if you please.
I am mere, and powerless before the rotations of the Earth
just as I am powerless to my impulse
to click the refresh button
over any one of your profiles,
thinking it's somehow better to read 'About Me,'
then to ask about you.
Refresh.
Google tells me it's an eight hour time difference,
and neither Romeo or Juliet are dead.
Though they never lived as nothing more than characters;
we are people. You and I are not tragic concepts;
we are merely circumstance to
an arbitrary mixture of romance films, evolutionary biology-
all subject to the Earth's curvature, the Sun's shadows,
and the mocking Moon's stolen light. Simultaneous.
But because I am self-aware
I can be the **** of my own jokes
rather than the butt-end
of God's lonely, bored cigarette...
...It always has to end with
depressing existentialist philosophy,
doesn't it? More reflections or rejections
of purpose or meaning
of heaven and hope
or whatever will close the golden gates
of happiness to me. It just always
has to end that way, even though I'm not a French writer...
... I could still romance you with my words
and hold you as comfortably as I could my favourite book.
Not too tight. Not too loose. Lightly, effortlessly-
that's how it felt
to kiss you Goodbye
and all of that jazz.
And now after all that, the blues.
Refresh.
Sep 6, 2014
Sep 6, 2014 at 4:14 AM UTC
I have never written a single poem
that my lovers could understand.
In truth, all my romantic verse is simple,
self-congratulatory applause
for not falling victim
to the virus of sentiment.
I am a gifted liar.
Sep 5, 2014
Sep 5, 2014 at 2:58 PM UTC
Gatsby's green light was orgastic, unreachable,
distant.
Mine is a little dot on my chat screen,
also green;
your being in some corner of reality
that, perhaps, is also
looking for stories,
looking for me.
Sep 3, 2014
Sep 3, 2014 at 8:03 AM UTC
Thesis:
There's an easy way to disprove
that ignorance equals bliss:
Your eyes
were puzzles of space-time,
studied through conversations
fervent in their background noise-
where I looked for one single oddity
in what might have been the ordinary,
except it wasn't. Space-time
distorts around things of great
gravity
and your light-consuming pupils
pulled me towards you. Complexity,
hidden in some unsuspecting darkness
that I was dragged into...
things I didn't understand
until I reach our event horizon
and you and I are one.
(As for my thesis: what great Nothing would we have been
if I skyrocketed away
for fear of the unknown?)
Sep 1, 2014
Sep 1, 2014 at 2:52 PM UTC
Your locker is empty,
much like how I imagine
I and the concept of you and me
will be.
You're going places;
unmistakably graceful
in your already absence.
Meanwhile
I'm trying to find a meaning,
a point
in my stasis.
I'm stuck
looking for a purpose without a you.
Aug 25, 2014
Aug 25, 2014 at 6:13 PM UTC
When I put
this drink can
against my mouth,
and the liquid flows past my lips,
I am reminded
of a moment,
of a closeness,
I'm not sure I should still feel
but do.
Aug 22, 2014
Aug 22, 2014 at 12:26 PM UTC
I.
In a world made of glass
I am your home
and you have begun
to throw stones...
...because maybe you forgot
that you can still see the world outside
without breaking me.
Not only that,
but your home had a door.
II.
Science says, that as glass, you will do a number of things
to my white light.
Let us assume then, that you are prism.
Let us also assume that it is a coincidence
that 'prism' rhymes with 'prison.'
Regardless:
When I go through you, my white light
will scatter
into a rainbow. While together
we are momentarily beautiful...
...one cannot help but wonder
about my sacrifice.
I've been torn apart into different colours.
No longer myself.
Just so you could have this poem.
Aug 20, 2014
Aug 20, 2014 at 5:09 PM UTC
YOU.
I.
I enjoy the simple things:
kissing You Goodbye
since that's the only time
when God will let me have You-
when I can't;
the occasional glimpse of this God
when Your skies meet my eyes
since that's the only time
that I'm allowed to have You-
when I can't;
Your hands on my chest
and mine on Your waist
all until the school bell rings-
since that's the only time
that God will let me have You-
when I can't.
Which seems to suggest
that no,
I cannot have You.
No,
I can't.
No,
I won't.
II.
Once upon a time
when eyes and skies met
and ignored the sounds
of lockers closing
bells ringing
and other people talking-
an invasion would flood our vision.
A friend of Yours', or mine's, hand
would cut across the space between
eyes and skies
and block the exchange of poetry
that I liked to imagine
happened between our souls.
I was perpetually asked:
"Don't you have a girlfriend?"
And perpetually answered:
"Yes, I do. But can't I have friends?"
Then suddenly I understand
what 'perpetually' actually means
when You tell me
that in a few months
You'll be off in some plane
going somewhere
for some reason.
(Question:
is it thus
too soon
or too late
to say that I love you?
(Or do I at all?))
Therefore there was perhaps no choice-
You and I momentarily disappeared
and we momentarily came into existence
in the briefest of
separate deaths
then
singular birth
then
singular death
then
separate births.
Separate all again, perpetually
asked:
"Don't you have a girlfriend?"
Then perpetually
answered
with nothing.
Well,
then I did,
now I do,
tomorrow I won't.
III.
We are together now.
Sometimes You talk
as if in an expository monologue
in the grandest and most acclaimed of stages.
Sometimes You don't-
and the threatening silence
makes me wonder if I should go, or stay.
I was attracted to the mystery of You
and am also now angered by it:
I have no idea what to do
and often don't even know
what to write.
Prose and verse often fail
when the author has nothing to write of.
(What I'm really saying is:
Do You plan on maybe
replying my messages
anytime soon?
Preferably while we still have
any time left
at all?)
And then, hours, or days
later.
I still have nothing to write of
so I instead write
this.
I also write how
"I will never know what structures
exist in Your mental architecture: You couldn't
bring Yourself to give me
even but a blueprint."
You still won't.
IV.
Exams are over. School has closed. We near our finale.
Of course what about
those fights that You and I
never had. Perhaps
we should've. Perhaps
we would've. Perhaps
there was no point in anything. Perhaps
there is no point in everything. Perhaps.
See, that's why I asked You
what You thought of Yourself,
Because I too would like to know
Who are You?
But then again...
I've changed my mind
about the end of this...of our...
literature. Let us instead say that
Your eyes are the stuff of poetry,
but look at the title of this-
it's only just... You.
And that's all I want
to talk about today.
But...
we won't.
V.
I count the days until the airport.
Take note of what I will say tomorrow:
"Listen, for I am…”
The Beast that shouted “I”
at The Heart of The World.
"...a poet missing his muse;
who wished he could have told her,
everything he could think of..."
The Beast that shouted “I”
at The Heart of The World.
Even now,
I can't.
Even now,
I won't.
Aug 19, 2014
Aug 19, 2014 at 3:20 PM UTC