Love

Love:
The word gets thrown around so much that it has
Picked up a few bruises
Lost it's beauty, it's fire
Our love... My love
The "love" of a foolish youths
Awkwardly flashing their status as a pair with their
Fingers
Interlaced
Between
Hands
As they walk amongst witnesses to a spectacle
Proudly proclaiming statuses for one another on Facebook profiles
As though love was some trophy for a game in which we all compete
That a lover is something we "have"
A statement which carries weight with peers.
Something displayed on the shelf next to your youth soccor medallions
An A+ essay on the fridge

Yeah, this was my love.
Something done to fulfill some sort of social need
That women can't just be people for me
They must be measured and weighed
Studied and compared
Like some sort of commodity or luxury
To be set on the glass table at home and admired
Alien ideals: "What do I look for in a girl?"

What ever happened to people loving people?
Loving them because their hearts were improvising songs
And couldn't stand to lose the beat of the other?
Why are relationships expected,
Distributed amongst a population?
A "one in three and you should be the one for me" thing?
When did we begin to quantify love instead of qualify it?
When did it become a drop-down box
On a crowded page of irrelevant information "About Me?"

I think I get it.
I've been the fool.
And somehow, I knew
Knew enough to write this.
I was not ready for love
If it was something I should have instead of something I needed
An expectation instead of a desire
A commodity to be hunted instead of a wonder to be discovered
So when the word rolled off my tongue,
it was just as deformed as my visions of it.
And my heart knew it.

Fuck society's "love."
Fuck all your "That's great for you two!" and "Oh! Where are you taking her?"
Because quite frankly, my dears,
Love is selfish.
Love means that you don't give a damn what anyone else thinks
That this person means so much to you,
You'll brave the ire of any hardship for them
The fact that "she is my girlfriend"
Shouldn't mean a thing to anyone
But her and you.
It's your love, and no one else's
And while you may feel the need to tell somebody, tell anybody
Tell everybody
Don't wear love on your sleeve like some gaudy adornment
Because if it is love, you don't need to tell it
It shows itself.
Because if it is love, you don't need to confirm it,
You've already agreed.
Because if it is love, you don't need to share it
The one who needs to know already does.

Wasted a Whole Day

The sickly sweetest taste
Of your lips pressed to mine
Sent wave upon wave of hormones
Flowing through our blood lines.
On that night of swaying
With hips positioned on hips
We had made a secret pact
With our two pairs of lips

And on the journey back
Those promises were made anew
Somehow both of us were convinced
That we had found love true
So we stumbled into a relationship
And made each other whine
So intoxicating with our actions
You though they were divine.

But quietly my mind complained.
Said that I had wasted a whole day.
And the promises, once so sweet
On my soul, they began to weigh.

Back into the yard we flew
And pressed our signatures in
Each of our warm bodies
With the edges of our grins.
Our hands explored places
They had never been before
And contortions seized our bodies
Each time, we pushed for more.

But day after day, unrelenting
The hidden affirmations made
In warm, but lonely places
Yes, on my soul they weighed.

So finally my voice proclaimed
That we had wasted a whole day
With our quiet confirmations of lust
We quickly pushed love away.
Leaving a shadow of its meaning
Behind formless words at play
Yes, while our bodies twisted
We quickly pushed love away.

Periapsis

"Hey! She's closer to you tonight than she will be in 20 years!"
So I had heard.

I ran to clasp the door
And pull open the only barrier separating

Her
from
Me.

Little did I know how far my eyes were,
How cold the night air could be,
With the sky between her and me.
The curtains of condensation quitely flowing thorugh

What a sad night it is, no?
Cruel coinsidence, not irony
Behind those clouds you wouldn't flee
No, not this "inconsistent" soul

Because too many nights I've spent
Looking downwards, ignoring, lost
And you've shone down smiling, tossed
Your light my way so I could see
Where I've been, where I'm going,
And you did so without a thought
Stuck through my growth and my rot,
Through rain and dark you have shined
Even when you could not see me.

When I finally do look up
I see what you have done for me.

Believe me when I say that I'd
Tear open the sky for you, just
To see whatever face you have
Be it turned away from me
Or brightly smiling.

And would gladly shine my light
So you too can see a path through.
Whatever path you may take,
Whatever light I have,
I'd toss whatever I have to you.

I haven't exactly been seeing you,
No, not enough.
But sometimes it takes darkness
To truly see how much light you have.

I'll try to look up more often.

But truly, this periapsis...
It's no shame to me. No sadness.
Though the clounds make your image infinitely far,
We're still closer than two usually are.

Sunrise

Sleep came and went for him that night
And as the hours wore on, the world turned
Just out of sight. Just out the window.
With the dull light of a book light illuminating
A graphic novel, not quite reaching
The sheets covering his body.
The dark walls, the piano, the wooden carving;
These only existed in his memory.

Yet, slowly but surely,
A dull light rose from the West,
Bringing the world back to his eyes.
And he rushed out onto the deck.

The flames slashed their way through the atmosphere
'cross mountaintops, into frost-covered valleys,
Touching the morning dew, with no heat, no sound.
Simply a shimmer, a reflection of vitality.

Behind him stood an old friend, her face turned
Towards the horizon. She was there to watch too,
White, glowing, pale, yet sentient as always.
Smiling as she had always been to see him rise at this hour.

He smiled. They smiled.
As she fell behind, never lost in the light
But at the same time fading,
The world turned, and life itself erupted from the horizon.

Sleep

Sleep comes but once per day,
Then takes its leave, leaving you to wander
and wonder what your wanderings during the night
had been. Why you are still
Head on pillow,
Body under blankets,
Bladder almost full,
Stomach almost empty?
The brain and body waken...

Or do they
Fall back into the sleep where they are constrained to
Think certain ways,
Act certain ways,
Obey certain laws,
Breath the air,
Consume the food,
Rid one's self of waste,
Rest the head,
Go to bed?

The body falls into predictable rhythms
And the mind falls into the same trappings, singing:
"Stay thy hand, for this is not how we should behave."
Sleep comes but once per day.
What would you dream?

Crazy

Some people may call me crazy
Sometimes I call myself crazy
But I think I know what's truly crazy:

The man who takes sticky notes
And a pen whose ink smears
Onto the top of a parking structure
4 stories high
Who yells at the noisy lights
Whose cacophonous, showy "light"
Blinds and hushes the symphony
In the night sky.
Who sits in the corner of a parking space
Glancing now and again at the moon;
the reason he came all this way
The blushing, beautiful moon

He is not crazy.
Who's crazy are those who refuse to do the same.
For their passions, their inspiration, their gods or goddesses, their loves.

And if you do not agree with me,
Well, then I'd rather be crazy
If I can continue in this "maddening" love.

Mountain-side glowing
In the blue bath of moon shine
Intoxicating
As the most ripe draught
Without the side-effects of
Alcohol. Beauty
Drank in by the eyes
Absorbed by the retina
That all men thirst for.