12 Poems of Love

Poem: Parts and Wholes

How can line after line
Of empty verse
Book after book
Of hollow prose
Falter so greatly,
Be so irreparably incapable
As to diminish their entire form as useless.
Novels are but elongated versions of impotent prose, some fractured slivers of metaphor.
Poetry but a stylized version of melodramatic rhetoric, visceral in its incompetence.
What need does literature have in its entirety,
When those hooks cast from ashore
Can not capture in any sense
Her face, swimming, five inches across
Within which I can consummate my being
And undoubtedly confirm, it’s the whole world
It’s the entirety of everything.
Today I learned, within a single wave
And within those parted tides,
Some aberrations which unknowingly make it to shore to greet my legs
I have known the whole ocean.
Just as in her face, I have known everything that knowing has to offer.



Poem: Wetnurse

This rain which has barraged me
Often in disguise,
Eternal are it’s forms, seen through various eyes.
Primordial sins perhaps remained
For which my birth was entertained
My birth so then, was incomplete
My birth so then forever, stained.

Darkest ink, depth cannot subdue
Has washed like water, my heart anew
Again I walk so forth inclined
Of oceans passed and rain behind
Waves before and trickles define
This multiple which has gripped my mind.

And then I see perhaps with eyes
Too glazed, confused, and sorrow-dyed
That are these cheeks truly alone?
Untouched by drops of sins atoned?
These eyes, they know no beauty’s hold
Which Sold too often some foolish gold.

Perhaps the unity of all these years
Is if once,
I see
That upward curve, The small expression so brief of feeling, that it lifts, before it’s said, mystifying this ancient head.

Upward lips which slightly curve, are you the unity of all these years?
Your parted lips which swallow whole, this rain which pours, this rain which tears.
And when those lips, converged to smile
My birth though stained, became worthwhile.



Poem: Kaiki Deshu

In order to impress her, or impression myself upon her
I became unique. I became the lost poet,
The tormented artist
The man of external joy and internal strife
All this I assumed, appropriated
Many I already was, but motivation came in the form of a row boat upon two parted seas.
Opening only to let through the most prestigious of passengers.
However, in attempting to be something,
the genuine is surpassed, overcome, undermined.
I became myself once again. The self I had partially misplaced.
But in becoming myself, I undermined myself.
In many cases I’ve heard, you find her but lose yourself.
I lost her and myself I think.
As love came, luck left.
And as my eyes diverted from one field to another, my whole harvest was spoiled.
These bitter plums I’m left to enjoy, away from myself, away from her.


Poem: Neruda

He said Even if you cut all the flowers, you cannot stop the spring from coming.
But if the garden of my pleasures
Is ravaged
And each plant with great care removed
With bare hands and some with tools
And the weeds overgrown and infesting
My palace, and grow over my fence
And insects which dominate as warlords
Tribal conflict reflected in mounds and hills
Ancient battlegrounds of dead grass and dead mice
Even then spring will come he said.
For you can bring all the world to its knees, and even then spring will come
But with even the slightest twitch, the slightest flick or fleeting glance
Love recedes into oblivion, never to be seen again.
I fall in and out of love, with the passing of moons and buses, or the wind in one way or another, a raindrop on my forehead or my cheek.
Yet even then my love is stronger than any bonds which spring can fathom.


Poem: Symposium

My fidelity
My courage, wisdom, temperance, and justice
Take root, in the confines of something
Which adds to the Earth, even though it surpasses it.
One man can reflect an entire nation.
One day can reflect a lifetime.
The whole is more than the sum of its parts.
And in this complexity, of holes being fulfilled, she has countless times, captured my countless hearts.





Poem: Room for Improvement (2006)

Her voice echoes in the air, not through sound
But because it briefly stagnates in the air, time taking some respite to reflect on it as well.
She uses words but not language, and she smiles but won’t laugh.
Continuously she tries to recount some positive aspects,
Creates entire new moral philosophers spontaneously
And tries to iron these wrinkles of divinity I wear beneath my shirt.
Perhaps I enclose my neck, first with buttons and then with rope, to cover these hideous, insidious, yet elusive branches.
I love her, because I’ve loved her before, I loved her at first because I love her now.
Yet she continues this renovation.
Some idealistic home improvement episode.
Asbestos veins, a termite infested liver, a weak foundation, even an Indian burial ground
All of these must be addressed.
This effort which trickles down minutely, never realized by such low class men as me,
I wish she was someone else’s burden.
There are more men than there are stars and yet I alone was destined for this confusion?
To be left with some parasitic inheritance from my birth, only to be consummated in some impotent fears, this woman whom I’ve been burdened with after swaths of years.
If only by that divine nature that burdened me with this, could she be taken away as quickly as she was forced upon me.
From conception it seems I was meant for this dispute; I have spent my whole life in preparation for this event and will spend my next half in reflection.
When will she leave? My esteemed former guests return whom she had rudely evicted.
Criticizing my idealizations, my obsessions, my reflections, my passions.
Never do her own fall under this conquest, but my lands must be ravaged, exploited, thrown into turmoil by her hastily drawn borders.
She must realize, eventually this dispute was created long before we were. Life is long, but living is brief.
She cannot testify against the entire universe, and I long ago lost whatever argument I was meant to present to the courts.
She means to absolve my conception of myself, yet I wish I could absolve her from my life. Remove this bandage which covers no wounds, which unites no opposites.
Even now she cannot understand
I loved her before because I love her now. I love her now because I’ve loved her before. If I was born again I’d love her once more.
But beyond this, this tripartite affection, I cannot build her these kingdoms she deserves, nor can I crown her queen of any empire.
Forever I am enclosed on these shores which no tide dare approach.
I wish she would absolve into something, evaporate, subluate perhaps
Before she realizes, what we’ve both known already.
I’ve loved her, above and below time, whatever confusing clock they employ
Yet I can never love her as a man, only, and forever, as a boy.



Poem: Moth meets lamp

This night is partitioned
This sky is partitioned
Whatever sliver I can see, cannot compare with all there is.
This sky, which blankets every concern, mercilessly observing them.
And centered within that opposite field, of darks and pools as opposed to lights and plants, is that imperial glass.
That Crescent, reflects both itself and myself, a childhood home grounded in place, named after that fleeting sibling.

What gives the moon its light?
How can it be that sun, so often seen as fiery, red, and filled with burning temerity?
The sun cannot give off light, when it’s very essence is one that burns incessantly.
In extending a giving hand to that benighted sibling, it offers consumption.
But what will offer consummation?
I have deduced, and inherited a great truth.
The light of the moon, is not its own, as is now so widely known.
Or that eager sun so bound in self, to any other it cannot help.

That lantern which gives meaning to my customs.
My fasting, my resting, my faith.
This Crescent next to me mirrors the light of the moon, and on these partitioned nights I honestly wonder, Which one gives light to the other.
Is this moon so luminous in itself, that it marks the borders within those kingdom?
That gives faith to my faith
Rest upon my rest
And fastens my fasts
No.
That glow is one I’ve seen before; that moonlight which permeates all sensory being
Is the same which I see on her face
When my arm caresses her, slightly
below that partitioned sky.
Even facing away, she gives light to that distant moon, and light to my wandering mind.



Poem: Swingset

Reveal yourself, they say.
Before those passions fade.
As if, the sky itself parted and laid down some path before me.
As if those wood chips inspired courage
And passerby’s walking their dogs were encouraging me.
Even that very grass, which exists only to soil my shoes specifically, and solely
Is apparently some great vassal for my cause.
That sky ominously held up by some strings
The puppet master, becomes the puppet
And I’ve seen it castigate the earth, harshly scolding it.
I have seen the sky rip itself apart, cannibalize its own clouds and vomit them out.
Bathing me in that excrement.
As I sit there, it mixes and congeals itself with my own.
And we both briefly take comfort in knowing we will always share this passtime;
As we leak, flushing ourselves of whatever emotion we were permitted to have, we can always laugh at my futility.



Poem: Slovenian Romance

A thing is best described, not by what it has
But what it lacks.
Imagine, a man is shirtless.
Described as without a shirt, and without a sweater.
Materially, he is the same, but worlds exist in the silences between some minor fabrics
To borrow a metaphor,
Coffee without milk, and without sugar are more different than they are similar.
A thing, is not what it has, but also what it lacks.
And so I’m not just Ibne Ali
I’m not simply some bad poet
But rather, I’m the poet, the Ibne Ali, the coffee without milk when I would like to be without sugar.
Some infinities are larger than others, and some blacks darker.
Defined by what I am, I am
Defined by what I lack, I can never be, for whatever she has,
Completed me.


Poem: Revelations

I have been wounded, and left here to rot. By my own indecision and inaction.
The classic dilemma unfolds. My passionate love on one hand, her sensibilities on the other.
But I rather amputate these feelings, this hand as well for good measure,
As long as within her smile; there remains some sense of pleasure.



Poem: Long Pants

I cannot articulate this alienation
As if God had not cauterized these wounds enough.
I cannot simply continue
These tides now wash into these wounds as well.
I cannot move from this stagnation
Her hands and then a bus, a rabbit, some restaurant. This was my direction.
Those lips, those parting gates held some praise for this most pathetic of men.
Some love perhaps. Although that’s a bit presumptuous.
It’s not just any unrequited love
My prose masterfully foreshadowed this.
My life, these thumbs were the poetic device for itself.
Years of compiling one poem after another, only for the first true love I manifested, to douse these aroused passions.
It’s simply not fair. When I am granted the world, condensed in five inches it’s not fair.
There is simply no woman, who will ever compare.



Poem: In search of a lost wallet

Tried rhyming with this poem. Comes out Immature and cliche but I like it.

Essence precedes essence.
Before that frost envelopes my skin and cools it’s glow, it reminds me with months of wind and harsh whispers that it’s coming. Winter is rarely an unannounced guest, rather the most delectable in manners and virtue.
Before these rainbows, these mirages uproot my feet, and this skin fills itself with these radishes and landlines, this erratic rain is my indication.
When this frost migrates as birds have done, and these layers of fur melt into one
Already within the stagnant air
Lies the scent of spring affairs.

And rain is not my guest, but a stranger then
When summer ascends yet once again.
In the night, I see only the hints of the sun
And in the day, the glow of the moon is more radiant.
In myself, I see her, in her, myself.
Spring can prepare a man for summer.
And Summer prepares him for the fall.
Fall then does for winter,
And spring, does winter call.

This pendulum, receding in one hand and growing in another soothes these storms.
And even though the rain is wet, whether I offered it tea or not, this unity between the man who lives without rain and the main who lives within it, orders.
Meticulously, I have always defined, beginnings and ends, holes and fillings, origins and finishes.
Fall sheds the leaves for winters harvest.
Winter melts those hills for springs allergies.
Spring brings those rains for summers puddles.
And when I look into this ocean between my knees, I see those restless leaves yearning to fly once again.

But even if I order them all
These seasons and histories
These beginnings and ends
These holes and fillings
These seasons which prepare for one another more than themselves.
Justice in this world, could not be isolated within me. Some divine order exists for the world, but abandons man in infancy.
Essence prepares essence. Yet;
Love could not prepare me for those corners, a broken swing set, suburban streets I left years behind.
Or was it that she could not prepare me for love, this lingering colony, a melancholy I have always known, but have yet to find.