In Love

It's fallish now, and I think that every time the season changes or something changes I'm left to stay up all night to commune with my muse and not go to work in the morning because there are more important things like walks in the park and thinking to do. I wish you could understand how little there is of me in my poetry; how little my thoughts are actually a part of all of these words and how I just listen to the voice in my head that sort comes from the back and to the side, so if I were to swing around my head really quickly I would never be able to catch sight of it, like I can never bite my own ear. Sometimes I wish I was more ambitious, more ready, more connected, more motivated, more interested, more sincere about what I want to do in my life because I like to float around these wandering days, especially fall days, in dreaming little ways, like I'm already forgetting so many things in my past that come out of nowhere and then vanish again when the smell dies away. I remember when the green grass smell before soccer practice and I remember thinking that 24 was so far away and that maybe life would be simpler when I was older and didn't have to follow the rules like I did. But then I got to college and took a clown class and found that I loved rules, ridiculous rules, but rules that gave me freedom and flow and the ability to make people laugh in an entirely weird, trivial and magical way. I want so much to be able to give myself a meaning, draw myself a box to live in just like everybody else, but the more I try, the more I resist and know, without knowing, that it just isn't all that right for me. That as much as my mind cries out for a traditional life, my body cries out for the spectacular and my heart cries out for mystery and passion. Underneath all of these things, all of this rust, and tiredness and worry, is a spectacularly happy being unable to be so yet. There are moments, like moments in the dark, with candlelight in a bath, or moments on a train with crossword puzzles, or moments in a classroom teaching - finding out what that word really means and how fucking tough all of that really is. There are moments, but there is also a spectacular mis-communication in my body I'm only now finding out about; only now trying to really do something about.

I smelled bad just before the lamp went out

and you drove me off a cliff when you told me

you didn't like the jeans, but it was a more

perfect day because you were honest, and I

am so happy because you are honest, and I

will dream that someday when we are old

we will still be honest and cranky and in love.