For Squid

You sat, making yourself beautiful by

Holding a wedding bouquet far too early

And your brown curls

Echo profound thoughts that

I'll never know completely

(Though we are strangely connected).

You'll always be the Charles Wallace to my Meg,

The Jane to my Lizzie.

You make everything make sense

In a world that spins crazy fast.

Inspired by Woody Allen's "Annie Hall"

You wanna hear a joke,

You ask, and we infer-

A joke that really isn't funny

And will make us slightly depressed

But leave us in a profound mood.

You'll hit us with cute

Romantically dressed

Characters and quippy lines

Of cynicism.

You'll break the fourth wall

And also bend reality.

But, while doing this, good sir,

While presenting us with

Spiders, Mashed Yeast, and

Houses located under roller coasters:

You present us.

In a ridiculous, almost eerily...

...RIGHT...

... ACCURATE...

... form.

What I would like to know

(And save your jokes for later)

When you broke the fourth wall,

Did you break into my mind as well? 

They played the game of deepest, darkest secrets today-

He moved his knight to A7

And checkmated her soul.

The only move she has left--

There's one secret she hasn't told him,

One unnoticed pawn in the corner.

 

And that silly token means everything- 

But here it is.

All her heart wants is to

Know that deepest darkest romance.

She wants to be as Heathcliff and Kathy,

Ross and Rachel,

Darcy and Lizzy.

 

Pick your famous couple from pop culture--

she envies them.

It's not the dreamy perfect man

With alabaster brow that she longs after.

It's fitting with someone so utterly.

So perfectly.

That she cannot breathe.

 

So, gentle boy, take her pawn.

Take it, but remember, this one has wishes.

You confound me-

You are so interestingly fresh

Like a pair of new shoes.

I put you on, and you squeak a little.

My heels hurt, but only until

We both find a middle ground in the toes,

Or right between them.

(Matters like this are always *that* precise.)

And it feels just so right to wear you,

Like you fit me,

Or at least for this time.

If you were shoes, you would be a pair of sandals-

Something I can feel summer air through

Something the sand can slip into

Something I can feel real about.

Something, someone.

Or at least....

The possibility.

I remember laughing with you about pregnant women-

Your long, lithe finger poked through a hole in my high school weary jeans.

You told me that when I was pregnant with my own kid-

You wanted a portrait painted of me

And my rotund middle.

I wonder what would happen when I'm actually pregnant...

And sent you a picture of my stomach...

After we haven't talked for five years?

Attempting to write prose

Is like catching Carroll’s snark-

It’s an elusive little beast

Though Erwin may call it a beauty

Like he does with alligators-

We writers know better

Prose is the hardest beast to tackle.

Are we just poets because we are cowards?

I wonder.

It’s just as well-

The tacky khaki shorts one wears on safaris

Don’t look good on me anyways.

Ice Cream Sandwich

It's the soft in between moments that I think of you-

You have become the melted ice cream in between two

Stale cookies of happiness.

I'll be enjoying my day, not remembering you-

Not even thinking of you-

And then, a drop of you will fall onto the side walk in front of me.

You make everything in my life sticky,

Inconveniently uncomfortable.

Hopefully, some day, after you've been in the freezer of forgetting for some time-

I can take you out again and smile.

Here there, little man

Watcha doin here

On the dusty roads where

Pick ups and bajos

Are king?

Take back your Armani suit-

It don’t mean nothing here.

===

She sits, dreaming of places yet to be

Paris, Mali, Verona, Madrid.

Perfectly oblivious to the fact

That the sun is shining on

Her too-young face

And the brick before her

That was hand carved.

====

White dust bunnies descend

Through the sunlight,

Dodging between the brackets

Of a white window blind.

This is the only kind of

Snow you’ll see in Florida,

I whisper to myself

As I stare at the negative space

Between me and the clothes you threw on the floor.

====

The wine dark sea

Envelopes you, Penelope.

Your sweat drenched back

Gathers grains of sand

And they become your diamonds.

Ithaca cries for you, lady,

You half window,

Un accepting of suitors.

“Do you not understand,” they say

“That your husband is gone?”

You have no reason for diamonds.

You deny all suitors,

Content with laying yourself into the sea,

Whispering his name into the wind.