This Messy Life

There was a poem hidden there, I think,
as we said goodbye the first day
after walking down West Street
to the combis that will take me home
for the next ten weeks,
when the palm of your right hand
lingered a noticeable second on my back.
Like street kids vying for scraps of attention,
deconstructed clichés loitered
in the periphery but I was
too distracted by delicate kisses
of fragile butterfly wings
inside my stomach
hinting at things to come.

There was a poem that night
we walked along the beach.
The moonlight licking at your curls,
your hands stuffed in jacket pockets
striking facsimile of a seven year old memory.
Anthropomorphisms
lurked in the Indian Ocean
just beneath the inky waves
crawling towards our feet
again and again.

There must have been a poem
when I nested myself into you
tangled in hotel sheets
and allowed contentment to unfold
itself upon me
when I forgot to wipe the smile
off my lips.
It was right there when you held my forearms
branded by melancholy
between each thin white scar tissue
meters, line breaks, stanzas.

There is a poem here
not just because I am flying
not just because I pulled you down and let you in
not just because I swoon in Durban's warm embrace
not just because I see you brimming with potential
but because rhyme and form are always tucked into
this messy life.

Ship in a Bottle

November

thirty days of falling leaves deserting
barren branches for the soft ground
below, leaving them half naked to weather
the encroaching black-hearted winter

this is a month for harvesting ripened
remnants of loss, regret, and senses,
for tracing your writing scrawled in books,
each stroke and letter trembling of cancer

some four centuries back, on an island,
men plotted assassination of a monarchy
fittingly begging, remember, remember
their destinies fated and engraved in stone

it’s a time to honor those who sacrificed
in times of war and gilding vestiges of glory
but I would not dip your army jacket in gold
and rob it of the natural faded maroon

still stars leap forth from midmonth nights
landing their futures in the refuge
between words you loved famously spoken
seven scores and seven years ago.

so they say it’s time for giving thanks
for chrysanthemums to bloom, but I think
it’s time to battle the gray descending curtain
of emotional anesthesia, so remind me

just how red was the blushing maple
at the entrance of Sloan Kettering ?
how stubbornly did the birch outside
your window cling to its summer dress?

how deeply were the scars from the burden
of history and tragedy on your neck carved?
but most importantly, tell me, in the six years
since you left, why hasn’t a single day been easier?

Wrapped up in books - Belle & Sebastian

Summer's hastening on,
I'm trying to get a feeling from the city.
But I've been unfaithful-
I've been traveling abroad.

Capturing Moments

Because we were young, because we were basically children, we were earnest.

"What would you do?" I asked.

"I guess I'd take you somewhere, top of the Empire State Building, maybe, or the World Trade Center. And then I'd say," and here you got down on one knee, "'Here we are at the tallest point in the city, maybe even the world, but I want you to take me higher.'"

I laughed, but not because it was cheesy. This was before I understood what corny meant, a few years before I even realized how cliched this moment potentially was. A couple of heartbreaks before I realized that words like these were carelessly uttered, hypothetical musings about the future often posed but never followed. I didn't know then exactly how easily forgotten vows could be, how every promise came with stipulations and fine print. My ears weren't tuned to the asterisks at the end of each declaration that lead to escape clauses. This was back when I thought the fate of my parents was the anomaly, not the norm.

Because we were young, because we were basically children, you gave me a ring pop, an edible promise ring.

It was only after a few years passed that I would realize how fitting it was. How after the sweet adoration have gone, devoured by our hungry mouths and hearts, what is left is just a cheap reminder of what was no longer there.

You were kneeling on the carpeted floor of the bedroom belonging to the teenage girl before you, a girl who taped a picture of Kevin Garnett above her bed and had newspaper clippings of Mike York and Tsuyoshi Shinj(y)o spread across her desk. It was so long ago that I was passing for a 12-year-old and getting Martin Brodeur bobble-head dolls. It was so long ago that the Devils still played in Continental Airlines Arena. It was so long ago that I couldn't think of anything better than spending the day with you at Shea, catching a $5 game against the Expos.

Because we were young, because we were basically children, I am amazed you lasted as long as you did.

You held me often, ran away often, laughed often, cried often. You tolerated my madness and sadness and sickness and craziness. You promised to major in psychology so you could help me, promised to take care of me, promised me I'd get better.

This was when you weren't yet mature, or realistic, or cynical. It was when you weren't yet aware of your personal limitations, when you weren't fully aware of the frustrations of my personal shortcomings. When I hadn't yet found better hiding places for my vices, before I had grown up, and calmed down. This was when I'd still call every night, panicking, thinking the world was going to end, thinking my life was going to end. Before attempts and psychiatrists and hospitals and institutions. Before I even knew what borderline personality disorder or schizophrenia was.

Because we were young, because we were basically children, we were earnest.

I didn't know yet that this would happen again and again. In the basements of boys who would play "Question" by the Old '97s, or in front of fancy restaurants in Saratoga, or on the beaches of southern California watching the sun set over the Pacific, or in Subaru Forresters in front of the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. Sometimes with rings, sometimes without. Sometimes by people who are still in love with me, sometimes by people I'd rather never see again.

But it comes back to that corny line, to that ring pop, to the innocence of teenage love. I don't mind that I'll never feel it again--I have places to go, things to do, worlds to save. But I felt it once. And it was enough.