By mojave
Date: 31 March 2000

Dot-Dot-Dot-Dash...

So how did this happen?
And why?
I have several theories--
none all that original or exciting
(until they happen to you)--
as to how it was
that I read your poems one winter night
and saw myself
and saw my pain and joy and hope
and craving
reflected back
perfectly
with heart-thrilling
clarity.
And then the glorious intangibles just
took over...
Love was there one day,
fully-formed
out of admiration and respect,
like Athena
from the head of Zeus.

And it was real.
And it was not to be
denied
or equivocated over.
And it was heart-troubling and sleep-
robbing and appetite-stealing and
alla that good stuff
at once.
And it still IS.

But the theories are bullshit.
What we're left with now is the reality.
I did not need to write
a poem to make you real.
You were real already--
you are real--
and the poems made themselves.
And they will go on--
mine, yours--
even without us.
Freed from our minds at last,
they could not return
any more than we could hold them.
So I have no use for them now...
You have read them; it is finished.
(Basta, basta...)
(Pace, pace...)

And now I can't sleep,
which worries you,
which worries me,
and so I sleep less...
Work is a nine-hour stretch in solitary.
You ask me what I want
and I don't know.
Well,
what I really WANT
is a vacation from this physical reality,
this bloody contingent realm
of sentient flesh
and beating hearts
in tragic isolation
between the covers of unread books
and out in the desert
drunk on too much sky.

That's all...

And now we torture ourselves
expertly
with the finely-phrased
what-if
and the subtle
wouldn't-it-be-nice.
But God only knows
this isn't a Beach Boys song--
and it ain't me, babe.
Not yet, anyway. 
Hell no...
This is Johnny Paycheck
fresh out of prison
in a smoky honky-tonk at two a.m.--
a hooker at the bar,
a drunk passed out on the bathroom floor
under the condom dispenser,
an old man
alone
at a table
weeping
in his Schlitz.

(And no,
that ain't why...)

It will take a long time
for me to fully realize all you gave me,
to figure it out.
You made my poetry real
for the first time
(for one thing).
You showed me just how many ways
one can say
'I love you'
and mean it
every single time.
And that's still all I can say--
I love you--
because nothing more is needed beyond
those three syllables,
within which
resides
all the hope and meaning
in the world.

I talked easily--
maybe too easily--
of destiny and inevitabilities,
and still I wonder...
No, dammit,
still I KNOW.
But I dispute nothing you say
in your poems.
How could I?
We both know already
what the other is thinking.
We both know already
what the other can endure
in the name of this.
And we knew these things all along...

And THAT--
my sweetest girl!--
is something we have no choice but to
live with--
even when there is no longer 
a we
to speak of.