A very rough draft of a poem

 

She waits to talk to me, but I

am always too distracted, focused

on what’s at hand; usually reading

and writing everything I can.

 

My consumption of language becomes

so out of control as I read

more and more until my head is full.

She waits. I forget she’s even

 

there needing my words, my support,

because everything has become

about the words I plan to write

but not to say; I fill my head with

poems and paragraphs

 

while her heart drains slowly.

Because of me. Because I forgot.

Sometimes I’ll read and put myself

in the words of someone else,

living through their writing,

but other times I re-live

everything I write. It makes

 

life challenging to her. Because

she needs me to be with her, but

all I can do is write

and I write for her but she

needs to hear my voice as she tells

me what’s wrong. My words

need to be about what she says, not

about what I feel. When we walk together,

our conversations become disjointed as I say

the things I planned to speak to her

 

but they’re not what she needs to hear.

It takes me so long to come up with a response

to whatever she has told me

that by the time my words are ready, my voice prepared,

her crisis is solved. She needs me,

but I’m just never there.

 

My writing, free, verse, meter, is never

enough or right to help her.

She is longing for a quick connection

but my anxiety of saying anything wrong

makes me feel like everything

I say is wrong unless I spend

hours preparing each word,

chopping and seasoning,

 

boiling and frying, pressing

together and tearing apart,

forming my thoughts so specially,

so scientifically yet artfully. She

loves me enough that she will work

with my anxiety, but still

I feel like every word I say fills

the air around me and crowds

my body until I’m under stress,

ready to collapse.

 

She can calm me down,

but only until I speak again.

Only until words need to be

spoken once more and I know she

is hurt that I can never have the words for her,

that always all I can do is

be there to listen, and not to

give the advice I used to,

I know that she misses it, she misses

me and thinks I’ve changed but

I’m just sick and I can be better

but I cannot be better right now

because every word I speak provokes

anxieties. Every word like a cannon,

drowning out the world around me

in a mess of crashing noise.

 

She still loves me. I

don’t deserve to be loved by her,

because the person she fell in love

with was not sick. The person

she loves was someone else, witty

and compassionate, but my

mind has strangled that person

and replaced her lover with

me. I have trouble finding

the difference, but I see it

through her eyes. She

still loves me, but does she love me for who I can

be? Does she love me for who I was?

Or does she love me for me,

brokenness, anxiety, disease,

and lack of the advice I used

to give?

 

She has waited for so long

for who I used to be. She has waited

so long for just me. She can never

ever have what she needs

from me.

I was in green grasses which were dark depths

which were my formation

and the people were my formation and my

guides through a long story

 

following in no footsteps in particular

but allowing wandering waiting

for myself I found a place that pulled me

pressing me into a mold of the world

 

but he pulled me out and washed me of

the dirt that covered me inspiring

me to be more like him and to care

about where my guidance was and will be

 

until the day he held my hand I was clueless

until the day he saved my soul

until then I saw the world without a lens

but now it shines with the light

 

now I shine with the light

because my eyes are opened to reality

because reality is seen through a lens

and freedom shows me the way

 

green grasses are not where I

am called to dwell and I

am called to dwell in the

dark valleys of hopelessness

 

my life is not for me

my time is not my own

my faith is not from within

my love is still broken

 

but broken love is better

than hate for hate hurts

those hated and those

who hate but

 

love binds like a chain

hate severs and love

heals making dark valleys

green grasses of praise

 

and so long as I have him

so long as he has saved me

and taken me into his life and his life

so long as his life and his life and my life are one

 

I shall not be lost again

but my way is clear before me

in the dark valleys

we call me to be in

I shall not be lost again

A very rough draft of a poem

 

Confused friend, cautiously caring,

why won’t you tell me how you feel?

Weeks have gone by as

I

wait. Tell me, soon, what you want for us.

Trying to forget you,

everything reminds me. City

streets are

where I fell for you.

 

Walking similar streets

only makes me think back to

that one day;

I took you to the art museum, where

we

wandered and watched; the vibrant moderns

caught my eye, but they

made you laugh.

It endeared me to you more.

 

But now, weeks later,

tell me what you think.

I thought we would be great together,

an unstoppable team,

but you seem to disagree. If

you

think that this is what’s best for us,

then art, these city streets, and

flowers, as cliché as that may seem

will always remind me

of

us.

I’ve replaced toilets, cleaned drains, and

fixed leaks, but the

words I’ve heard baffle me;

is an automatic compensation valve

an ADA-compliant device?

Do pressure-balancing valves

manage pressure-assisted toilets?

 

Or maybe none of these devices are used in tandem.

 

I know potable water

flows through brass faucets,

but do PVD finishes relate to

PVC pipes?

 

Do flush valves regulate

dual- and metered-flushes?

Or do flush valves have nothing to do with specialized toilets?

 

 

 

Speaking of toilets, are

high-efficiency toilets

and urinals

gravity-fed or low-flow?

 

Can thermostatic valves prevent thermal shock

to copper, lead, and plastic pipes,

if pipes even face such injuries?

The answer, I don’t know.

 

Maybe I shouldn’t do as much plumbing

as I do.