papers, my boy

put off

as in it got or i'm

you off

as in i'd rather get

can't jive, don't hate

to the musicians i will never have:

my language is the common one. the kind that gets you extra cream in your coffee, or your oil checked. it is the twenty-six letters assembled together that form these modes of expression that i use to make my professors happy, and my temperament said.

your language is the one i admire though. theres a middle man. or woman (instruments have curves). and i know that to play them is to touch your first love. i'm content with the status of mistress, if only to your wooden woman. but like you, i can't get content.

something about thumbs slapping strings to make the soul sing. mine hears it too, and wades through the nonsense of syntax and verb tense like a fog that cuts and clears away. i hear you and it's honest. i hear you. it vibrates my ribs and pulls tight my tendons, aching like a square peg looking down the round tunnel of admiration.

sure, i can jam. but you won't hear me. you'll hear the notes i could shake out of my cold metal valves at the last second. you'll hear the nonsense of noise. you wouldn't know of my soul unless i told you. i need to happen in verbal conversation.

so to my unfortunate unlovers: i love you. polylingual proprietors of my heart, i'm sorry you can't get me. and i'm more sorry than you that soaring free my heart can't be, without a-b-g-d-c. which may or may not be a major key to release a real ease, so i don't wear out what out i sneeze on my sleeve.

love, s-l-c

i’m not sure our realities allow for this love to come to fruition.

you try to wake me up but
i’m talking through my dreams
bout love with uppercuts, struts
and tea that flows in streams

i’m talking through my dreams
sorting out abstracted feelings
and tea that flows in streams
to reconcile the morning

sorting out abstracted feelings
in complex situations
to reconcile the morning
has concrete connotations

in complex situations
it’s better to keep dreaming
has concrete connotations
if you follow dreamy feelings

it’s better to keep dreaming
when we have this conversation
if you follow dreamy feelings
subconscious love is liberation

retrieving records, rompers

there you were
and there i was
looking up
at your face illuminated
then not
and again and again like benevolent waves
backlit then apparition
always moving forward.

in the tedious, sporadically lit hallway
you rolled me past doors
that hide the precious and worthless
i look at you, feeling small
like a baby in a shopping cart
then we make all the faces we can
with our tongues and cheeks and eyes