(Mis) takes: just another poem to read aloud

“to the ones who rush into love too early,
knowing it will not last,
praying Lord, please keep me strong
and lonely through all of this
so it does not hurt when I rip pleasure
back out of my body.” – Ryler Dustin, Love Poem

 

I want to be famous for making mistakes in love.

When I die, I want to stand on the edge

of whatever it is that we stand on the edge of when we die, and say,

 ”yes I did that” when some big booming James Earl Jones voice bellows,

“what the hell were you thinking?”

And, so unfortunately because notoriety has not been known to wait, I start this plan with you. 

 And this is only my explanation as to why

 

you have to wake in the morning to an empty bed and note beside the pillow

which reads,

“Hello you,

I left before the moon left the sky, but I promise to return if you can promise me this:

 

When you leave please give me an advanced warning because I want to be somewhere cold,

like Antarctica, so I feel nothing. I want to be where I can run with all the lonely penguins,

where I can bury myself beneath an ice flow and see the world through its  kaleidscope

and all its instructionless shattered images will finally come with a reason for their breaking.

 

When you go I want to be somewhere biblical.

I want to be where a woman will cut all of my hair off just to understand my weakness.

And I will pray that my hair never returns so I can like this forever, screaming visions of you

in place where visions are normal and no one will questions my sanity.

 

When you go I want to be in a desert so I can explain this longing away with thirst.

I want to lay myself down in dunes, I want to grit my teeth in dust storm,

I want to swallow sand just so I can have it rub at my heart,

 and scrub away everything from the inside out.

I want be emptied.

 

When you go I want to be in an amusement park making myself sick.

I want to be dizzy for days so my head can match my heart.

I want to lose all my money in the water-spraying horse race game, so I will understand

what it is like to give and give and give until even the tips of your fingers ache and yet never find relief.

 

When you go I want to be in a shopping mall so I can tear this ring from my finger

and throw it into a wishing well. Not a magical wishing well, but one of those plastic yellow charity wells

so I will have a full minute after dropping it through the slot  to watch it

spin and spin and decide to stop it with my hand before it drops through the hole.

 I will, of course, stop it. And then I will take the ring and put in a box full of pop can tabs

that are going to be melted down for a wheelchair. And I will imagine that ring, riding out of here on

some kid’s sparkling new wheelchair, going places that you and i never went.

 

When you go I want to be in a room full of angel’s wings. I want there to be wings everywhere:

scotch-taped up on walls like posters, hung off of pictures hooks, trapped in frames, stuck up on fridges

with magnets, lined up on bookshelves, stuffed into vases. I want the carpet to be woven with threads

made from the dust that settles after angels are caged and dreams are shattered.

I want there to be so little air in this space that breathing will be optional and I have to chose between

oxygen or lying down here forever.

 

When you go I want to be somewhere holy

like the crease in the bed that the streetlight refracted off

our bodies at 2 am. When you go I want to be in the space

that love made so I will never again have to search for

this place.

 

Signed,

All my love

PS This will just be my first mistake of many.”

i’d hate for us to ever have to say anything bad

i’d hate for us to ever have to say anything bad

so i warn you of approaching storms saying

do you like pina colodas and getting caught in the rain?

because we are about to experience one

intentions

i have such good intentions

to alphabetize, and yet

the alphabet remains so

obtuse