The Girl You are about to Meet

The girl you are about to meet has a name that sounds like something men used to pray to.  She is waiting for you outside.  It is cold and the wind has teeth tonight, but she'll brave it all, waiting for you with two tickets in her pocket, smiling politely and shaking her head 'no' at all the people who pass by.  She'll say 'No, I'm waiting for someone' to the men who ask after her safety and comfort, even the ones who smile handsomely.  She'll brave all that too.  All of it, just for the sake of waiting.  After all, she's waiting for you.

When you get there she'll look relieved.  You might recognize this look.  It can either confuse your or embolden you.  She will be taller than you expected.  In her boots and winter clothes she will be taller than you.  You might think this means she is too tall for you, too large, too square shouldered.  She will stop you at the box office and present you with the tickets she bought, refusing to let you pay her back thinking its polite, or perhaps thinking this will make you less likely to be worried about money in the relationship.  This will cause you to worry about how much more money she must make than you and whether you are man enough to seize control of this relationship.  This will also lead you to think that she is too tall for you.  Too big for you.  Too much for you.  You will not think that she is a girl.  Just a girl.  A girl who waited outside for you, enduring the rapier wind and ravishingly warm looks from handsome strangers.  A girl who waited outside in the cold...for you.

You will notice her smile once you're inside.  She has a cute smile.  It shines with a sort of modesty; humility brought on by her uncanny ears.  She will catch you looking at her smile and thus prompt you to look at her eyes.  She's pretty.  Far too pretty for you.  She is perfect.  If things go well you will wake up in her apartment surrounded by her clutter.  You will see her childish, un-sexy underwear.  You will see the dark splotches on her skin; on her back and on her thighs, and the ever-present fuzz of hair covering places on her body which your mind and issues of Playboy tell you hair should not grow on a woman.  If things go really well you will discover hair too bold to grow in peach fuzz.  You will encounter her most intimate of briers.  You will find she is a terrible cook or that she puts ketchup on her eggs.  All of your favorites will be absent from her movie collection.  If things go really well, you will become privy to her every imperfection; not in one night, but certainly over time.  And you may just come to love her for it.  But tonight, things will not go that well.  Not as long as you are intimidated by her.  Not as long as you fail to reward her graciousness with your graciousness.  And certainly not if you keep a girl like that waiting.

The girl you are about to meet is actually your enemy.  There is only one copy of that special edition book signed by the author left on the shelf and both your hands will fall upon it at the very same time.  She will pretend to be modest and shy.  Will apologize, because she is a girl and, unlike you, is cautious about unsolicited touch.  She will tell you, 'that's fine.' and 'You can have it.'  You will not consider the questionable judgement involved in starting a relationship based on a lie.  If you really look you'll notice the way her eyes never leave the book; and how want and disappointment never leaves her eyes.  You, however, will be concentrating on how cute her glasses look.  You will offer her the book, thinking nothing of her eager and unhesitating acceptance; in the hope that you will be able to parlay it into a date.  You can, but you will have to be a lot smoother than you actually are.  You will in fact, have to take on a completely different persona to pull this off.  See previous caveat re: starting off relationships based on lies.

You will think yourselves compatible.  You will have all the same interests and you will both think "Hm.  Perhaps this is the one."  And because you are both contemplating this, and because you are both becoming tired of meeting new people you will both be on your best behavior, and will therefore continue to lie to one another about things which should not or would not normally matter.  At the end of all this she will call you a red meat eating, uncultured, whole milk drinking douche bag, and you will call her a clove smoking, non-dick-sucking, two faced, hipster poseur bitch, and you'll both part ways searching for the girl and boy you respectively met before one another.

The girl you are about to meet has eyes like you've never seen before.  She is tired of hearing about them.  She will stare at you after you say it to her, lock you with those unprecedented cliches, challenge you to say something to her, something new, something--anything more.  You will understand thins inherently, feel the hollow Christmas ornament nature of your polished tin complement and search yourself for something with a little more...moreness to it.  By the time you think you have it, the bus has stopped, the doors have opened, and she's already left.  You will never see this girl again.  You will always, always want her.

The girl you are about to meet has been told she has too much meat on her bones.  The moles on her face mark strange shapes between her mismatched ear, her prominent nose, and the excess cheek that hides her eyes when she smiles.  And yet, she is beautiful.  She wears clothes that do not flatter her but at least they drape in patterns that disguise her paunch.  She is too much of herself.  She has grown to dislike the taste.  And so, you must taste her.  You must kiss her so deeply that she discovers brand new flavors in herself.  You must do this so often that the hands which come up to brace herself against the assault of your pressed bodies become quaint tourist attractions.  A place for you to visit and imagine a time when such a great nation needed protection from invaders. The girl you are about to meet will some day open her borders to you, tax free.  Her hips are beach towels.  At the sunset of your lives you will find they have spread and you will both still enjoy the warm comfort of them long after your children have played in the surf, built their castles, wrapped themselves in their own beach towels, and put all the toys away.

Rainy Season - Day ??

[re:Stacks by Ben Foster]

I set down my cup,
you fill it up.
I drink, set it down,
you fill it up again.
We do this until we are both
laughing madly,
dancing and smiling.
Only I am too drunk to see
that you are not drinking;
that you were never dancing;
that you have stopped pouring
and we have nothing to laugh about.

How long have I been the only drunkard at the table?
Did your lips ever even touch this wine?
Did you ever even crave a sip of it?
Or was all your pleasure in the pouring
and watching me dance
and laughing?

Why I don't call everyday

[Kindred has Left the Building by Kindred Pasana]

Because she has eyes
the color of greetings.

Because she has eyes
that are just the right distance apart,
but are never distant. 

Because she has lips
that are thin and smooth,
and in their movement they turn me
into baby birds:
Exuberant and chirping and thriving
off the things that come from her mouth.

Because she has legs suitable for traveling
and set my mind wandering whenever I see them.

Because she has a neck
which I would pay to leave kisses upon daily.

Because she has hair
that thrives on a lack of discipline.

Because she has skin
the same color and texture as the warmth
that I keep within me whenever our knees touch
and neither of us moves away.

Because she has a beauty
that is made luminescent by heat
and becomes more oppressive than the humidity.
A beauty
like Remedios.

Because some days I see her
and can't bring myself to look away.

The Only Reason I Would Attend a Cricket Match

I want to kiss you
under hot sun, spinning in
a crowd of thousands.

Fairy Tale

Once upon a time
I would say something
and somehow your heart
would know my meaning.
It was back when
men knew the names of their Gods
and there were dragons in the earth.

Tired of Love Poems

read write prompt #83 « Read Write Poem isn't exactly the inspiration for this one, but it's what got me writing, so in a way they are responsible.

---

Hearts dance on my sideboard.
On my bed head.
On my kitchen counter.
Hearts loiter in the bathroom sipping Mai Tais
Beside the porcelain swimming pool.
Hearts leave a disgusting, sanguine sheen
as evidence of their having been
on every usable surface in the house.

I am so sick of love poems.
I am so sick of having recently re-grown my heart
only to have it pound so fast and so hard
that it muscles through the bars on its cage
slumps down my shirt and onto the page,
greets the world with little arterial limbs,
and either immediately starts to dance
to the music of your memory or
Runs off through an open window or door
and gets lost in the street;
lost in so many different ways,
lost trying to get to wherever it is you've gone.

And I'm tired of dishonoring you
with a nightly seance involving me,
a bottle of rum, and a host of elated little blood pumps.
And the spirits we raise are only tricksters.
They're not you.
They smile too much and are happy too often
to really be you.
But still, I swallow their lies whole.
And I stay up all night long
wrapped in the warm fur of insincere memories
and remain thankful for the lack of acuity
that comes with the lack of sleep.

By the time your smile embarks
on its flaming course through the sky
I'm already tired.
I miss you.
But I'm tired of missing you.

---

I might have a hard time convincing you that I never know what'll come out when I write, but you'll have to take my word for it when I say I didn't know what I was doing when I wrote this one. I mean, Wow. Who the fuck died, right?

3num3r4t3d

Two hands.
One for making,
One for breaking.
But neither works without the other.
Two arms, best used for folding.
Together.
One ear for speaking into
like a cavern of secrets.
Another for whispering sweetly
sweet nothings.
Two lips for kissing.
A mouth for saying all manner of things
and a nose that wiggles
and gives a softer edge
to the harsher things said.
Two eyes that sparkle, shine, glow,
--smolder, burn, soften, ease, wander, but always return
--laugh, mock, encourage, encourage, encourage.
Two eyebrows which guard the eyes
like gates of horn and ivory
and make liars or omens of their expressions
whenever they work together,
and even when they do not.
Forty -eight moles on the face, neck, and scalp
of dubious purpose,
but they do look cute.
Four hundred, eighty two thousand, three hundred and ninety two hairs on the head,
by my last count.
A perfect amount for getting lost in.
And of the times I've thought
--'She is all I've wanted."
And of the times I've thought
--"She is all I need."
And of the times I've thought...
And of the times, I've thought...
And of the times...
I've lost count.