Riverside in 1966

I wrote a love poem to you on the underside of a desk

in the library, back in ’66 but people didn’t read it

the way it was intended, from my heart, rather than my fist

people never read anything right because they are people

and back in ’66, like now, people don’t exist

it’s hard to explain, like I’m a ghost telling other ghost stories

 

People are…

people are a play, an act, a motion

people are a beat and a bleat

people are red on the inside like love

but with a more rich hue, thick like a play

an act,

a motion, emotion

they can’t understand why I would take a red dress

and make it more red

and call it love

because they never existed in the first place

 

You existed for a moment when you gave me that look

over the stack of periodicals with their dust and dust covers

you, your red dress, the watch, silver against the slim of your wrist

you who are not people

you who are you

a breath that expands the meat of your ribs, the blue of your eyes

like ice maybe you wear red because you’re blue inside

made of ice

like me, I’m always blue

always cool

I want to find out, your inside blues, your look

above the dust and the dust covers

tells me you want the same

you want to be split along your seams

 

I wrote you a poem and I tried to explain to people

like a ghost moans

like the Holy Ghost and when I was a child my father and mother

bundled me to church and fed me wafers and wine and

I was taught that Jesus made Simon a fisher of men

and my father made me neither a fisher nor a hunter

and yet like Jesus

I want to hunt

I want to hunt

I want to be a hunter of man

I can convert them all

there is Paradise, and I can take them there

 

I wrote you a love poem on the underside of the college library

desk in Riverside, in ’66, and I became a thing

a thing, an immortal thing, of cosigns and codex

and I would watch them

(bounce bounce bounce)

watch them

(bounce bounce bounce)

with my letters in the mail

(bounce bounce bounce)

cosigns and codex

(bounce bounce bounce)

while people try to puzzle me out and I see no nice buttons

(bounce bounce bounce)

while the AM radio talks talks talks and the people

(who are ghosts)

worry worry worry

about their little kiddies who

(bounce bounce bounce)

dance dance dance

in the clearly narrowed scope of my vision

I wonder what six pounds of pressure could

do to this moment

 

I think I’m smarter than people

because they are just people

people are a snapshot of a photograph

people are a shadow of what came before

people are the distraction, the great distraction

from the red inside

 

I’m sorry you know in a way

that I made your red dress redder

there’s really no way

to get that stain out

Lord knows, I’ve tried

I’m unwilling to die