love is also discoveries who that human is who that self & soul is one loves already. it's a long long ride to entwine like dna all our tributaries & secrets, our surprises. who has something better to do than write love poems on valentine's day over the internet? some men drop bombs on the cradle of civilization some women love those assholes.far of fire my old pre-divorce house had a fireplace, old thing with a crumbling chimney, & i am telling you the utter truth first winter i got a cord of firewood delivered & dumped in front of a leaning garage which was eventually leveled away but this: reclining on blue livingroom floor, face in my hands in front of the fire in the fireplace i smelled you in new hampshire i saw you thru the flames the long years eating so much oxygen i dreamed there stoned by lost hours thinking yes, i'll kiss her again. that fire sizzled the skin of my face from a young man in an experimental college in the 1970's with a young girl from virgina in love with him so much she didn't believe it to this 1998 valentine poem burning in an e-mail hot like sun on skin in the afternoon the next step my left eye-lid is still twitching this morning after 7 hours of drunk flat black slate sleep. you are the first person i think of, yr secret room of fears & doubts you let me in over the phone last night, worried like an indented luckystone, wow. & both of our wounds & all our scars. all this stuff getting out like old useless blood is necessary because we aren't cool young kids in love, nope, old folks fingering old books, rather, fucked by too much chaos, wait, this is more than epic love. this is more than a book or a movie. what a sunny valentine's day today! for the sun to be shining on us walking any street! holding hands! sometimes a poet shld shut up do a bowl watch tv pace the rooms maybe wash dirty dishes go on long epic evening night walk to a bar & drink a lot, eye young girls who see him as beast, & he is moments from madness beast scream at the chipped moon animal alone because fear rules all pain because she's an old hippy chick buddhist back-pack walker in fredericksburg he has 3rd shift workingman hands in far north erie water slapping words into poems all day wet dew appeared since she pulled away from phone-sex after some excitement on the smile of his cock then he figured enough's enough & whipped himself a tea-spoon of whipped cream she doesn't realize until now & he shlda just shut the fuck up & leave her go like before end of story weeping woman weeping beast being, a writer i was 20 on the island of corsica alone with my books & typewriter in a room overlooking ajaccio bay where the moon wld swing down like a round white astonishing creature of earth & all stars were shifted in new skies & in mornings thousands of gold-finches swooped below in trees around the parkinglot among flowers galore & slow happy people of ajaccio sounded like deep-throated birds i didn't know the language & i didn't want to, i wanted to write, i wrote, i wrote from dawn until moon-submergence in black shiny sea, i wrote & wrote & i didn't say a goddamn thing really except i missed you enormously, i missed you & you didn't write back, i wrote why aren't you writing to me but you were somebody else in some weird future dream 23 years away to this point now. writing novels strange, i haven't thought about this thing i call a novel i wrote in my word processor for days! some of it is on the internet, & some some people have somewhere, but the whole book, yes, it ends because something new must develope with a beginning like this point now in time in our lives halved from kissing & writing the next story of this dream as it all happens & rolls away. if this much has changed, apocalyptic gloom-writing days to sensuous love poetry for my sweet ann, & the change is a strong weld why shld the title of the next novel be YOU. if i looked like charles dickens it isn't my duty as a poet to stand up, walk over to my dictionaries & find the correct spelling for asymmetrical, or is that it? you describe yr face as asymmetrical, changeable, angled like a snowball prism, but look at me & this mug, sometimes clean shaven, sometimes bearded, left eye-muscle's continuous twitch, cat-whiskers growing out of my ears. before i came to see you 2 weekends ago i gazed in the hallway mirror at myself & i didn't know who the hell it was, that isn't ME. i saw my father's ghost blend with my face, with how i appeared as a young boy. too much, this asymmetrical sense & condition, like constant uncontrollable change. what do a man's creations prove to the uncentering center of the earth? racket, racket, droopy jacket, eating rabbit stew by habit. in my hand, in the hand of a man i call me & my hand i stand but i'm sand & you're breath. the evil bitch i still hate, that's a natural impulse, her. & you, the only woman i've loved & love, know how much i do love you if it's even fair to compare proportionately how much i've hated & hate her. i saw her in the car today & my throat clogged with disgust. i just glanced & didn't speak. i yelled out to doug I LOVE YOU SON! before that car screeched away. "what are you doing?" an innocent question i'm sure balking there isn't necessary i'm hitting a pipe. it's a friday the 13th evening & yr 42nd birthday. we're 500 miles apart. i sent you a romance bouquet of flowers & cards & a pack of old golds & a heart-pin & other stuff this week. i wish there was more, like my tongue, my nosing nose in the night, all my arms. & the moon, girl, that round white rock in the sky, & stars by the orgasm-full, & every word in every book you've read. diamonds & nothing rusted, no sadness, no longing. i'm writing you this poem. i'm hitting smoke & sighing then smiling because i've seen & felt you smile. i don't find it terrible
to be sitting here in a paid-up apartment with pot, kessler's, pizza, e-mail & the internet, tom waits raspy in the livingroom blooming like alcohol moons of ecstacy, a lot of cigarettes, coca-cola, 10 bucks in my wallet, & you in my life again. i don't want to go anywhere. i am creating us with poetry, which is a pretty astonishing undertaking & activity, but a writer writes & i'm a writer without a choice by now. this is the life of a poet in america. well, a stoned one anyways.she says (poem by Ann Dexter Herron) i don't write poems. and i don't write poems on demand or by request. but long ago i wrote you a poem and wrapped it around a pack of cigarettes. i left it on your desk and hoped you would give me something in return. it took some time but you finally did. this is not a poem and this is not a valentine et ceci n'est pas une pipe. this is a thank-you note from some crazy witch. thanks for the old golds.
