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lycanthrope
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what good is it to be forgiven
or given begrudging admiration
for your complexities
if you are not liked?
what good is it if that girl
in the dark night of questioning
cannot look to the small answers
of your existence -
a letter, a picture, a ticket stub
and find not just
what she could or should
but what she wants to know.
what good is it if
in those rare, and rarer moments
when you uncomplicate yourself
and offer, as the first man,
your best approximation
of the beloved myths
of prometheus, orpheus
and the noble savage
if there is no one who will receive it?
in the wide host of your memory
peopled as it is, not one?
not the girl you loved in 5th grade
not the peaking half-life
of the bar that night.
what good to be an instructive failure-
the province of the dead
the cold momentum of writing this poem -
written as if i'm ridden
by the emptiness at my back -
danced around through scenes
i want to live, as if i am mocked -
those scenes - a father revealing
the broad adventure hiding
in the seemingly mundane -
with a single sage point of his finger
you see wasps fighting around
a frozen mortar blast of violet
and are told they are lilacs.
parked at night
and a girl leaning to embrace
only your arm
with her entire body,
as if, even with the inability
to shut off all of your other thoughts
and even with the distance
that normally is guilt to retain,
it is enough. just this. enough.
what good in being complicated
when what you need is a series
of simplicities. to be liked.
to be in a photo, looked
at from time to time.
by another when they are feeling
as you feel on a night like this
dark questioning.
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050216
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