Emerson was right, of course.
Each friendship and each contract
Steals a tiny piece of freedom
From the parchment each of us
Is blessed by birth to carry.
Yet, humans to the core are social.
Creatures in a nature that abhors
A vacuum. Our conspiracy
Negotiates with captors,
Hoping always to relinquish
Loneliness instead of character.
The artistry and artifice of living
Boils down to strategy of highest skill.
How does the one self-sacrifice
To serve the greatest good
Without imprisonment and dissolution
Of one’s humanity?
We started a fire
on the deck to make smores.
The wind moved through us and
your sweater tickled me arm as I
played your favorite
songs you like to hear me sing.
You poured the wine.
Every few moments
embers would crack off their logs and we’d
both wait, just an extra second, before stomping it to death, to see if it would catch.
We saw the trees sway in the gusts
enough to topple us, if they came down.
We felt the impending rain in the
infrequent tentative nature of
early summer storms.
I saw your hand
not burned, not crushed, not wet
Tracing the rim of your wine glass
We waited for morning and hoped for dark, as the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart.
Crustaceans would be preferable to thee,
Omniscient, prescient, impotentheos,
A backwards gaveled book of make-believe,
When “just don’t be a cunt” is less verbose.
Convenient, to manipulate the wills,
Freebasing fallacy into their ears;
The easily impresséd imbeciles
Degraded to the front, and from their rears!
To conjure up an illusion of worth
Both yours and all the innocence corrupt
Before, after, and up until their birth,
Regardless if their hands are raised or cupped
In defense or hope some mercy might await.
Your eyes survey the table for a fork;
They beg you with their fists between the gate,
“Excoriate yourself, and spare the stork.”
To put this plainly, pedocidic cyst,
I’d hate you if I thought you might exist.
I didn’t forget you.
I couldn’t.
The sun came through the trees
and I remember the dew and the wet of the
northeastern summer things
and what it does in the ways of making
light and it’s colors
banded, derived from one
glare between the front yard
oak trees of a house not
updated since the 1970s.
I came in slow to my driveway after
because I
wanted to see how much the post
with our house number on it had tilted
I didn’t
Forget you.
I couldn’t.
So when the water rushed down the
driveway and you and your children
stomped the water, and
made it a game
to see how much we could
rid of what’s been collected in
the rain, and the innocence
in the name of puddle jumping I didn’t forget you.
I couldn’t.
When I saw my daughter with tears in her eyes tell me
that she missed when it was less
of me
or when my son told me enough
he didn’t need my help
down the steps, or to hold my hand,
that he’s fallen down twice
I didn’t forget you. I couldn’t.
