Mills & Bozo

I was in my head again, I'm sorry to say.

I oughta not be worried about it as much.

It's only natural and inevitable isn't it.

Brains are strange. Full of chatter. 

 

- Unrequited love, love stories: have you considered there’s a reason people keep wanting to read them. A reason that people keep writing them. Keep publishing them?

- Uh. Cause people have no imagination?

- Joe.

- I know. I can’t help it.

- Hm, Or...

- Or I don’t want to help it, yeah.

- You don’t have to write a sloppy old piece. You can come at it from any angle, I would say.

- You know, I always wanted to write a Mills and Boon book. I thought that’d be fun. You know. Have one in my book list. It’d be funny. But have you seen their actual, like, requirements?

- No.

- It’s no cakewalk.

- No?

- No. They have to be…

- Good?

- Yeah. They have to be good. Fuckers.

-

once upon a multiverse

if

if she missed him for

one moment one dream one forgotten rhyme

did she still know that she could rewrite time

if she kissed him oh

if

only

if

x

-

I don’t know how many times I’ve tried to write that – poem I guess – and it never seems quite right. When I edit or write it I feel it but that’s all in my head and none of the longing or nostalgia, no, not nostalgia, that cheapens it, the love that comes back, the warmth of her, hair, etc, breathing, blah blah, breasts pushing in given and willing for more and the bodies so close but never close enough and every atom in that moment trying to pair and share and it’s not even sexual it is what is it I suppose it’s way beyond sex and some things just are if I can try if I can try to explain if I can just give a glimpse of what it feels to me when I write those words but the feelings that I can’t get down on paper – it’s like everything pixillates outside and the only high resolution is us not me not you but us a new thing from two separate things that should be or are only really correct as one thing.

All that comes back.

None of that’s in those words, is it?

Not unless someone reads it and in reading it the words which are there on the paper somehow bring back those – different, unique, individually-magical or poignant moments inside that person, remembering or longing or whatever, and those memories, those bodily memories and emotionally rising yearnings for something that’s gone forever take over.

I wish I could express things that well, so that a stranger could look at eight lines on a page and suddenly they’re timeless in someone’s arms and all that.

That’s what Mills & Boon require.

That’s what it means when things have to be ‘good’.

That’s why I’ve never managed to write one.

That’s why I’ve not done it.

I hesitated before I put the full stop at the end there.

With that in mind then let me indulge myself with the hope I try and hold. I would appreciate it if you’d allow me this one. Permit me to try and believe myself when I take a deep breath and broadcast this:

That’s why I’ve not done it yet.

JS: I posted this and didn't notice the little X at the bottom of the poem. 

I swear I didn't deliberately include it.

I'm going to leave it in even though it's kinda untidy, even though it softens the loneliness. It closes the open ending.

I choose to believe that somehow, something made it appear there.

To make the universe a little bit more joyous. Mysterious. Human.