Love Poem Laboratory (-6 days and counting):

Jazz Monkey or Red Truck?
for MLC

Nothing happens when it happens, but
Later we
Remember, take notes, attach a feeling to a smell

Or a sex act to an aroma of spices, sweat,
The cold
In a room unswept, something a lover said in jest

And make these things a totem, a charm,
To protect
Against hurt, or contrast against the dark spaces

We prefer not to call our hearts in these days of wink and
Smile. We’re weak
And still we walk. We alley-sweep and gather on the walls

Or attempt to put between us fine crystal, shared meals,
How tethered
We’ve become to the fictions that sustain us.

And in the end (which means not “over,” simply “tired”)
We pretend
It isn’t easy, when what we want is stuck to the bedroom door,

Attached to the corner of a painting, clinging to the old t-shirt,
Smelling like
What we cooked, and like the roads we walked: unsure but hopeful.