Love Poem

My grandmother is in a casket.

You are comfortable in

discomfort sometimes

I exist

Your hairs

not tied back 

fly 

forward

hands extend for the body you thought

lost

how transient being is.

And when my body dies, it may become a number of things like free.

I can’t write a love poem. 

If I can find comfort closest to colonial convention, 

then maybe

my soul could be saved from Hell 

built by conquest 

neither an abomination

nor the weak rib

perhaps, proving to myself my possibility to exist.

Do you really want a love poem?

I mean, the earth is on fire and

melting ice sheets are rising over the city

will we ever be able to breathe

if the atmosphere continues to choke us out into the cracks 

in the dirt of the pavement

deaf to our pleas of ‘I can’t breathe’ 

so basically, I no longer fall in love

cuz,

it may be catastrophically devastating.

The city is burning while drowning 

and I love contradictions more than Whitman.

What a cliché: a sad love story 

are you kidding me?

I’m already Gen Z

meaning we’re weird 

we use memes to communicate

death is a punchline

I guess it’s like a part of evolution or something 

But, love?

You really gotta be kidding me!

It seems foolish to discuss love w/o talking abt racism which seems foolish to discuss w/o talking abt white supremacy which seems foolish to discuss w/o talking abt insecurity

We’re #woke like that. 

“Woke”

“Love” 

“Poetry”

More specifically,

I can’t write a love poem 

cuz, I am not angry

enough.

I’m turning over to see my greatest nightmare stare right back

empty n’

off white n’ 

nothing n’ 

glaring 

waiting

for truth 

or something of the sort;

air is thick

like through pauses 

silences

breath

eye movements

look at these birds moving in packs making space for the little ones to survive 

I digress.

I learn growth by intensity of the sun

how it cannot be stared at for too long as if it is purity

maybe it is 

maybe it isn’t

who cares? 

we all are and aren’t always 

you are and aren’t always

anyways

we’re in our 20s

we’re kids barely

why do we believe love can only exist for one person one way at a time 

have we lost all imagination?

what is forever if not just the present moment?

You say: Break my heart, that takes courage.

I say: I love you.

But, this is not a love poem all 

cliché n’ shit all

normal n’ shit all

boring n’ shit all

not my style n’ shit 

but, shit-

We are the U-Haul I vowed my closeted teen self to never become. 

My full body must catch my tongue before I let the truth roll out with no filter

I love the way you roll our spliffs, 

and no

this is still not a love poem

but, I can use the word “love” all I want 

cuz, I said so.

This is my poem

a testimony of love beyond force.

I do not have the courage to break a thing, a being;

I am not as radical as you may think

my pen is the closest I’ve been to revolution.

I

am

stuck 

on

the Break 

trying

to make 

pleasing art of syllables in sentences

pages over 

I got lost

stopped 

picked you up

took you 

nowhere

moving on n’ on

until there is 

was something

no guarantees.

I may be scared without you 

Is that not love too?

Call it stubbornness wants 

following my own fate 

or simply

using the erotic as power within my life. 

I can no longer try to find words to put into form; 

perhaps, this is something like a love poem.