Make It Another

Ah, wherefore goest thou where I cannot?
And what dost thou that I can never mimic?
What hast thou had that I have never got?
Why doubtest thou when I have been no cynic?
Thou dost these things because they are thy fate
And I, poor I, must follow far behind,
Finding myself too incapacitate
To wander in the ways your fashions wind.
But thou look'st back and see'st me here in train
And seeing it, thy pace does slow and halt;
So just as all my hopes began to wane
Thou dost encourage me to re-assault,
And for thy waiting eye redouble trial
So thou wilt, seeing me, begin to smile.

Recollections Of

When you are gone away from me, I spend
The weary time in thinking of the past,
Of how I'm glad that some parts did not last,
And of how sad I am that some must end.
I do not miss the days you were my friend
Only, but I'm glad we were so cast,
And that we bound ourselves so very fast
Unto each other, which in time would mend
Into what we have now. Yet thinking back
I joy in what we had, and in compare,
For in the present I am well aware
Of all the contradictions we could pack
Into one friendship, which is now well altered;
And yet no whit has any of it faltered.

Hellacious

The day is very hot. I cannot tell
Whether the heat defeats me and I falter
Or if I am instead consigned to hell
And this vile warmth is my eternal halter,
But one of them it is. Either my flesh
Is bound on earth by heat unbearable
Or God has put his wheat unto the thresh
And I am chaff. Oh, what a terrible
Dilemma I have found, with no way out:
I sweat myself into infernal doubt.
Yet as I sweat I note the breeze is coming,
And cold wind rushes over me to chill:
Therefore I am on earth. This heat is slumming,
And will return to hell and leave me still.

Matters of Scale

I could claim that I would walk
A thousand miles to see your face;
But you would know it was just talk:
My legs could not keep up the pace.
I could say I'd grab the moon
And bring it down for you to hold;
But you'd remember ere you'd swoon
The moon's too big, too far, too cold.
I could declare I'd hold you tight
And never, ever let you go;
But you would think, and you'd be right,
Life might be inconvenient so.
So I'll just say: I've done before
What pleased you, and I'll do so more.

Explications

I cannot claim I've always had the nerve
To tell you just exactly what I thought,
But now, at least, I think that you deserve
To hear. So here I tender you, unsought,
My best expression of how I feel about
You. I am, of course, in love with you,
You know that, and, I think, without much doubt.
But there is more than that within me too.
There is a kind of joy suffuses me
Each time I see you, or I hold your hand;
A sort of incandescent leaping glee
I cannot claim I fully understand,
And every time you look at me, I know
I cannot help but look at you and glow.

Equivalence

What can I, or perhaps, what should I, say
To tell you what you must already know?
In fact, I know you know it, by the way
Your face lights up in that ecstatic glow
While we're together. How can I express
In words what we both say in touch?
Can this poor poem be a soft caress,
Or, since it cannot, can it mean as much?
Perhaps I ought to just remind you of
The way I look at you, or you at me:
A liquid mixture of pure joy and love,
Increased by common reciprocity.
No thought can be sufficient, yet in this
There's just as much of me as in a kiss.

172 UChicago-Kenwood

This bus runs only in the weekday rush
Not at whatever other times you need.
It spares you from the common sort of crush,
But God help you if any strangeness bleed
Into your day. Nor can you take it from
The places that you really need to leave:
The life filled with a dull oppressive hum,
So busy that you cannot even breathe,
The daily wandering you know not where
Just to get out and hope there's something new,
Hoping you can find some open air.
No, even at rush hour, it can't do
That. But you can walk away, and say
You saw a world not on the CTA.

Improvements

In company I wish that you were there
Alone I hunger even more for you;
I cannot be without you anywhere
Without imagining you coming too.
That does not mean you have to be with me
Or that I cannot live without you here;
Just that whenever we're apart, I see
That things are better when you're very near.
So if you want me to enjoy more things
Or show more joy about what has been done,
Just come with me. The happiness that brings
Can overwhelm whatever lack of fun
I might have felt before. Just be around
And there's no better joy that could be found.

De CopiaDe Copia

What can I say that has not found expression
In all these words I've poured into your eyes?
Right now I fear I must give the impression
I only write these things for exercise,
Since I rehearse the same small theme each time,
A over-copious rehearsal of
The constant theme of almost every rhyme
A dull extremely repetitious love.
I feel that I must seem Erasmian
Taking a theme and overdoing it
Providing an ear-penetrating din
In exploration of a boring wit.
But I assure you: if it were not real
I would by now not tell you how I feel.

Glasses

In all the time I've known you, I have had
Never a perfect rhyme, a perfect way
To say the many things I have to say
Without some part of them sounding so bad
I almost feared to write it. That's the sad
And simple truth of it; the price I pay
For writing you at all is that I may
Not like the way I write. I have to pad
Out lines, or turn a meaning just aside
To catch a rhyme or make a poem work;
Or when I don't, I'll just feel like a jerk
For how what I've just written will elide
The depth within my soul, and in 2-D
Show what should be expressed at least in three.