Sometimes I write because I can and sometimes I write because I must. Today, it's the latter. My loving cup is needling low. I need a refill. When I survey the vineyard of my recent days, yes there's a blight of sorts, but much rich sweetness abounds -- it's a question of pressing these fruits to my heart and letting nature's transpositional mastery have its way with me. I will surrender to the intoxicating effects of life's purest and most astute pleasure: friendship. Take me...
I am drunk on the kindness of a pal I call Lollipop, who sends me affirmations as chapters. Case in point, the "Tickle Chapter," in which she notes that even in my moments of grouchiness or melancholy, I can make her giggle. She sends me a photo of myself, and points out the way I crimp the corner of my coat pocket as an occasion for amusement. And I love her for noticing what I myself never would.
I am giddy that two friends today used the word "sparkle," one in reference to the smile they'd like to see on my face and the other in reference to a poem I had written. How can I be glum, when there's the potential to make others witness shimmers? I cannot.
I am tipsy in recall of a dinner that arose out of the blue patchwork of mottled circumstance. A recently met friend (formerly an unmet nemesis) and I broke lunchtime bread some weeks ago. Amongst the crumbs of our discussion I must have dropped a comment on poetry, a realm he'd long sought to penetrate in a way that felt good.
Days later, we found ourselves around his table with some of his people and some of mine, each sharing favorite poems and the stories of why. We were: a musician, a painter, a poetess, founder of a creative agency, a social entrepreneur, a slam poet and performance artist, a high school literature whiz, and me. And it was a beautiful night. For most of us, it ended around midnight. For one, Sam, I dropped him on a rainy street corner in the Mission District for a weekly open mic gathering, where poetry mingles with the sounds of underground trains and drunken revelry, ascending free. I don't know when the night technically ended for Sam. I know the sight of him entering the crowd will never end for me.
Just knowing that this yearning to speak, this hunger to listen, lives beyond my own bones is enough to sustain me through any thicket. My skin does tingle at the thought that some others want what I want -- to witness and share in creation. It's a communion over the works of beauty themselves and in the precious moments of cohesion that they forge. This is the only purpose. I am done with longing. You are for me. I am for you. Let's...
Un Soneto de Amor by Pablo Neruda
Luminous mind, bright devilof absolute clusterings, of upright noon---:here we are at last, alone, without loneliness,far from the savage city's delirium.
Just as a pure line describes the dove's curve,as the fire honors and nourishes peace,so you and I made this heavenly outcome.The mind and love live naked in this house.
Furious dreams, rivers of bitter certainty,decisions harder than the dreams of a hammerflowed into the lovers' double cup,
until those twins were lifted into balanceon the scale: the mind and love, like two wings.-- So this transparency was built