My Sincerest Apologies, V.

Woman

*rough draft*

"I'm too old for you" soberly somberly
addressed my precarious precocious advances.

But my hairy temerity pushed in until you
cried Yes. How often you shouted "yes...."

We always had your nononononononononononos
appeasing my yeses. So subtle and charming was I

that you gave me your eyes for spring and summer.
And your dark plump glossed lips just as long.

"You are delightfully weird," led days later
to a kiss to your neck to distract us from that poet,

And we made our laughter leap confidently and often from
lover's throats that mustered only crumbs of love.

I always marveled at the clues of curves under your thinnest
dresses draped over my laternight anticipations.

Breaking beds into carnival funhouses, holding you
in nimble lighting though we sweat until the orange juice came.

Your smallest goodbye was our biggest mistake, and that
biggest crowd was our smallest hello.

We said so many thankyous and missyous and youturnmeons and
actuallys and yeses and nos and I was content with the concision.

Gammy Be

"If a bird poopies on you, it's good luck! Or you forgot something."

"Staring at the sun is good for your eyes! Don't ask why, just do."

"If an ant with wings lands on you, it's gonna rain soon! Also when your feet hurt. Also, you can just look up."

Gershwin

I widesmile on those mornings
when ears awoke to Mom playing "Rhapsody in
Blue"
on the piano.

Beautiful woman: its legs were
thin
and
erect, its
__________body
______________long and
__________voluptuous,
_______its surface
the purest
black I'd known yet.

A combed and cured luster maintained no matter the sun, moon, or streetlight.

And Mom cheffed all flavors on her fingers:
piano,
pianissimo,
_________pianoforte,
____________________forte,
________________________fortissimo.
Lookdown dips and lookup cliffs along scales I
couldn't understand but couldn't help but adore.

And on Sundays, she wouldn't play it, but
the scintillating heres and theres of feather-duster dissonance
trying to emulate

my Mother's prowess

would wake me too.



Less Peace. But more pride.

Nostalgia

"I might not be the right one, this might not be the right time"-Daft Punk

My students asked me what "nostalgia" means,
and before I thought of those dead in my life,
I thought of you.

How we met under lo-fi music, lo-fi lighting, lo-fi flirting,
lo-fi literature, lo-fi voices. And you wanted my number?

How we spent nights just touch. Just touching on your woman's bed.
Clothes within reach. Poetry to spare. A flick of your lamp and off.

Immersed in those cotton crimson curves and quilts, I reclined into
your breasts and hands in my hair and we recited "HOWL" after each other.

I recall your smile, drawstring lips sliding over a 22yearold's braces.
And your laugh, a soprano simmering of elation. Kind of reserved ecstasy?

And you photographed me best, whether that means knew or loved or admired or
none of these things and only forgot.

But I still feel most myself when I see me from you.

I was the last man before you married him, wasn't I? You enjoyed me,
but I was a mild aperitif to the punchdrunk yum of him. Nice smile, too.

I asked you what "nostalgia" meant and before you thought of our
adolescent touch or glamrock debates or "coney island state of mind,"

you thought of him. I also remember how you bolded your emphases.
Such a brilliant writer. Such a brilliant everything...and I stopped in your mind?

At The Car And On Your Breath

"You forgot it in people,"
but it's alright. Because you
also said "I'll be okay
when I know that you're okay."

(to the car to swig)

And that shows a buried memory
for the it and the others,

(to the car to swig)

the way they used to exist for you,
the way they used to let you love you,
the way they used to you let love them,
the way they loved you used to let them
the way you used to let them love you.

(to the car to swig)

And the it'll live if you'll let it.
And the it'll love if you'll let it.

(to the car to swig)

It will live and love lives if you let it.
It will live and love people if you let it.
It will live and love and remember. No forgetting.

(to the car to swig)

No don't forget. No forgetting. No forgot.
No don't forgot it in people. You don't.

(to the car to swig)

You don't forget it in people.
You didn't forgot it in people.
You know it's there and you love it and love it loving and living.

(to the car to swig)

"It's gonna be okay. I'm gonna be okay. Once I'm okay, you'll be okay, right?"
"I'll be okay when you're okay. I'll start being okay after you're already okay."
"I'm sorry. I'll call this guy and get okay. I forgot it in people. I forgot love."

(to the car to swig)
(to the car to weep)