Joyful to Hear (by Mila) · Looking @ Poems

magnified (Poem)

2009-12-11T23:16:11Z

I wanted you to look at me

before I even knew I wanted it.

I’m glad I didn’t know until I looked straight

at you

You already were.

Look at me.

sad girl in snow (Poem)

2009-12-06T09:22:05Z

today, you’re Daddy’s girl grasping a single sky-colored carnation and a camera,

flakes of poems collecting in your fiesty jasper hair - shuffling through drifts of memories of him, and always her, but today, especially him

and behind you, a lonely trail of one girl’s footprints even though you’re not walking alone.

silently speaking with him with the snowflakes around trees dusted with glitter and sparkling with strands of blue light. There are specks of bells ringing far away.

walking back to me, you lay down a second set of prints.

I reach out my gloved hand, take your chilly fingers in mine. You’re years away and right here, holding his hand tightly.

You fish in your pocket for a piece of this little girl - unwrap a cherry cordial, or a shard of peppermint bark and pop it whole in your mouth.

Quickly, you turn your head to glance at me and I see it: a hint of a smile from my sad girl in the snow.

Minutiae (Poem)

2009-12-05T11:12:10Z

I carry around a toothbrush just in case

you call.

tiny little insanities (Poem)

2009-11-25T14:33:08Z

“Wait, what are you doing?” she asks, in between stanzas and phrases from her past. Listening to her voice in her voice, capturing her questions.

In between whispering “closer” and holding out her arm, holding me away, she wants me nearer to her, despite the fear of feeling me.

“You can’t handle me,” she tells me, and I think I can, to hell with the signs; tiny little insanities that tease us out among the hail, tempt us to tempt the storm

“I’ll drive you crazy,” she warns, and I’ve heard that before, finding and losing ourselves in constant retelling, and the truth - I really want her to.

We stumble closer, and wonder why this is the way the world works, when we’ve turned away and into ourselves, she finds me waiting for her to rest her head —

here on my shoulder.

waiting for her to slip her hand — here among my fingers.

“What am I doing?” I ask myself, I wonder about my sanity, when our roads diverge so soon, that I want this more with every word… that I want to be driven crazy.

And she waits for my response, for these words scattered and recollected for my words that tempt her to latch her heart to mine.

“Capture me in your words,” I want to say, capture me with your words, in between the lines and stanzas of our now, and we’ll always wonder what we’re doing.

the calculus of desire (Poem)

2009-10-21T19:28:40Z

The problem seems simple enough —

solve: you ∩ me for certain specific values of you,

and the variable me.

It’s an old problem, unproven, by the wisest

Math isn’t my strongest suit, but

i keep trying to prove this theorem:

For the variable me

& certain specific values of you, the intersection of you and me

exceeds its input values —

the calculus of desire.

more about me. (Poem)

2009-10-15T20:57:32Z

i don’t know how i know you, & i know we’ve never met.

i know you’re miles away, but

with a single word, or two, maybe a phrase and i feel your heartache on the tattered couch beside me,

and my hand’s on your knee, lightly, just present with someone I don’t know at all.

i know you started crying in the Rite-Aid, while I looked at you over the aspirin.

And that you read Bukowski with puffy eyes, I sipped my latte, half-watched fingers of smoke tickle the window, watched you, wondered, why?

Lonely, nowhere to go, lost on the streets of Manhattan. It tells more about me than you

that i know just your few words, and I am your tragic lover, on the couch & in the café our distance greater than the miles,

wanting to touch your heart across a gap I don’t know how to cross.

so let’s wrap our arms in long sleeves and be thankful, and go our own ways, til the next word brings me there.

only thing I know (Poem)

2009-09-29T17:41:14Z

Every lover wonders what to do: stand my ground, or change my mind? Do I fight for who I am, or do I give in to this design?

I never quite know the right way to go.

Maybe there’s a way to understand when I’m right and when I’m wrong. Maybe there’s a way to meet in the middle, make the changes that we can, staying strong, making love, a woman & a man.

Maybe there’s a way to know who I am. Maybe there’s a way to know who I am.

What does it mean to want to change for you, to turn my world upside-down just to see you smile? What does it mean to want to hold my ground, even when you shout at me, and the distance grows?

I’ll give you everything you want, but you got to know I can’t give it all away.

(To nobody special, & especially you) There’s only one thing I do know, and only one thing I can say, for sure – I love you.

torn in half (Poem)

2009-08-07T23:39:36Z

torn in half, I never knew the moment of the end —

memory so fragile, I remember only our smiles. cast in shadow, only whispers remind me why I’m sorry. I walked right through the final words, missed the credits and we go on. I missed the end, so I’ll remember why we smile — & that we laughed.