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.

Untitled

There's a bit too much milk
in the chocolate here. 
They don't understand when
I say cacao just
how deep from within me
the sound of it comes. 
They don't know what its like
to put a spot of
darkness on their tongues
and just let it sit there
melting...for...hours. 
Instead they say things like
"Boy, da girl rel sweet. 
For a negro girl." 
Sugar is poison and
cocoa butter makes
all dark choc'late smoother. 

All they taste here
is so much bitterness.

Rainy Season - Day 4

In the night,
I would love you.
If the circumstances
were different.
In the night
I would love you
with my eyes closed
and my hands open,
searching out
something warm
that isn’t
my self.
And when
I found it
in the night
I would hold it
in place
under the weight
of my lips.
Maybe
in the morning
I might let up
and see the thing
that I have found
for what
it really is.
But morning
is too far
And may never
Really come.
So for now,
in the night
I’ll hold it
steady.
Steady
As a rhythm.
As a beat.
Steady
As a groove.
Steady!
Don’t move!
Or you’ll risk
waking her up.
In the night
I wake up every
thirty minutes.
Steady.
Outside
You’re coming down
The same way
You have been
For the past
four nights.
You’re not heavy,
But you’re steady.
Steady.
I stretch out over
cold sheets
And try not
to think of how
your beating
On the rooftop
And the windows
Makes the room
Sound so empty.
Sound so hollow.
Sounds, so steady
In the night.

These Hands are Deadly

It starts with the hands.
It always starts with the hands.
Other men have words.  I don't.
My words don't work.
My words don't work like that, they can't be planted
in such shallow dirt as your ears.
They won't grow there.
My words don't work there so
I don't plant them there.
I plant them in my mind and in creases
between pages, between journals, between ideas
and they flourish in the tight spaces there.
Tight like embraces.
Tight like anxiety flooding my lungs.
And when they blossom they come like springtime,
flowering through cracks in the sidewalk.
Through cracks in my ribs.  Flowering
through fluffy clouds on blue days
that look like my grandmother smiling. They look like
beautiful things.
And their fruit filled vines sprout from my ears
and my mouth
and my eyes
and crack masts on ships.  And turn every man
that ever made you feel less than what you are
into dolphins. My words are fruit
on a sacred vine.  Fruit
that will become a sacred wine
a wine called poetry.
I squeeze the fruit with my hands. It starts
with the hands.

It always starts with the hands.

These are powerful hands.
These hands are dangerous.  You should beware
of these hands.  Don't let them touch you.
Not even in handshakes.  Not even in touches to your shoulders or elbows.
Before you know it you'll be giving me your name
for no reason other than I asked for it.
That is the very first symptom.
That is how it starts.  With the hands.
Don't let these hands open doors for you
or pull out chairs for you.
Don't let these hands catch you when you stumble.
Don't let these hands offer you sweaters on cold evenings
when we are talking late into the next morning
about life, and the universe, and the things that are in it.
and the fog, and where it comes from, and the things that are in it.

Oh!  But if you're already here
then you've already fallen prey to these hands.
Perhaps you were foolish, but its more likely
you were tricked.  For these hands are devious.
These hands have nothing good on their minds.
You could tell when they brushed the hair from your face
that these hands really wanted to touch you.
And then, only to hold you
steady while these lips have their way with you.
And all the while these hands have been doping you
into something pliant.  So that you lie still
while they move from innocuous stings to
tracing smokey paths along your hips,
over your thighs,
up your belly,
down your back,
across your breasts.
And you will hold your breath until
these hands press electricity into you
and make your heart race.
And make your toes tingle.
And leave you gasping.
These hands will beckon you to come
like springtime.

And then you are done for.

Be very wary of these hands.

The Things We Could Do

We could make love, you and I.
We've already become intimate friends
and at no loss to virtue or distance
between Me lips
and She lips.
Already we know what the other
needs, wants, hopes for.
Already I've stolen grasps
at the slender bone at your waist
and the softer flesh of a thigh.
Already we know too little
not to want to know more.
Not to want to know how the rest
of one's skin feels under the other's
fingers.  Or lips.  Or appreciative eyes.
Already, I've thought about it
enough times to see it all.
Already I've seen so much
That I want to see more.

We could do all that.
We could consume one another.
Savor flesh like fruit
Until every ounce of juice
splashes brightly on our tongues
Or drips languorously
down our chins,
staining our favorite shirts.
We could giggle when anyone asked.
We could smile into the morning sun
walk straight, but slow.  Be there, but not now.
As if to say: What stain?

I could hold you in my mouth,
carry the taste of you with me
like hard candy.
And no one would have to know.
You could dance on my tongue.
You could dance.  Just for me.

Oh, the things we could do.