Samson

After Clyve played Samson by Regina Spektor on the piano in my loft.

My dear, my dear
it is a sad thing, I find, when one poet falls in love
with another poet who has fallen in love, already, 
with his poems and out of love with the world in which she lives.
 
You love me like a blind insect loves the stars. 
A bug is dead within three days of its hatching.
A star is dead long before its light is. 
And an insect has no interest
in what rots and what shines.
 
I was too proud to lift my shirt and display, for you, 
the raised scars you left across my back.
I could never let you know I was hiding it from you. 
I couldn’t let myself believe you were hiding anything from me.
I had promised not to speculate, ask questions, or hope
for any gifts you didn’t hand me.
 
Holly compliments me on my use of more mannered line breaks,
which terrifies more than reassures and kicks around embers in my worried heart.
We talk about voice and song and I lie about my goals.
I don’t want to be a poet, Mama.
Don’t make me talk about the rain
slowly falling.
A windowpane speaks
In blue whispers.
 
I don’t want to be like my idols, except maybe Matthew Dickman
because he made me fall in love with a man I didn’t know 
and still makes me look for signs of that man in you.
Does my a*s look good in these snowpants?
I ask but know you won’t answer the way I want.
Instead, you steal the cigarette from between my lips
and say nothing. I know you are your own poet.
I do not think another writer is an adequate muse for me.
We are both our own narrators and I fear too much from your
retaliation.
 
Holly says I talk about cigarettes when I’m taking an “emotional risk” but I don’t notice it.

If I ever fall into a coma,
I hope you’re the one at my bedside.
I want you to wait for me. 
 
I fight the urge to write about the curves that were made when locks of your hair fell onto the piano keys. 
The sound the scissors made, rusted in light of a blue morning.
Samson sings me songs while I steal his strength.
 
Another morning comes and your hair has grown back and, for a moment, I think that you might just be more of a human and less of a demigod.
I look out my window to see the lamp in my yard, still on from the bonfire.
There’s something beautiful written in that lamp and that sunrise, 
but I worry I don’t have the penmanship to put it down.
It’s something about life and death maybe. Or maybe it’s about growing up.

The sun is making little fairies of light when it reflects off the beer cans your alcoholism left in the grass.
I can’t stop thinking about how you drink too much then drunkenly catch my sober eyes and hold them ungently. 
And how Veli says you just drink too much and it’s got nothing to do with me.
Denial is too often underestimated. We are all guilty.
 
There are unfamiliar birds outside my window and my curtains have a slight glow around the edges.
And those two bright orbs"
the rising sun and the forgotten yard lamp"
are standing side by side against the newborn sky.