(Author Note: God knows where all my snapshots have gone)
I started writing
these love poems
in 1978
they didn’t work then
and they hardly
work now
they were designed
to capture attention
through novelty
and they sometimes
did that
but more often
they were failures
I wanted them
to do the courting
the wooing
and perhaps in the back
of my mind
they were supposed
to have the relationship
for me
and I was too scared
and inexperienced
I liked the exercise
of trying to wrench
a new way of saying
it
free from my stale language
and something resembling
love kept appearing
and then it disappeared
again and again
writing love poems as though
I never had a heartbreak
almost had me dumbing down
my love poems
but more than that
I stopped
as I realized the fear:
too much of my writing
and my unformed heart
and verbal ornamentation
had been let loose
on a unsuspecting and
undeserving world
I imagined all my
long hours of
counting syllables and
stretching metaphor being
unceremoniously
crumpled and dropped
in a waste basket
with junk mail and
other unsolicited advertisements
or worse, still,
I pictured a catty circle
of women – late night
half-drunk, reading
the purple swollen
vulnerable verse
and having a good mean chuckle
at my expense
Hell, I don’t blame them.
The poems were uniformly
self-conscious
and painfully amateurish
but the most paralyzing
fear yet
is that a few of these girls
have treasured and
saved these premature
ejaculations
and based their
desirability and value
on these words that
were dedicated to
getting past hello
I picture a map of
California
with cities up and down
the state lighting
up
where I imagine
my stray thoughts
and eternal promises
have blown.
may these poems never
see the light of day
may the world never know
the fat oily
teenager with bad hair
who poured out
his heart
as best as he was able.
May these poems be
our little secrets
each one is a
private snapshot
of me –naked
save for a naïve and trusting heart
worn on the outside.