Liver Box

My cursor is winking at me ///
suggestively ///
expectant of me ///
It expects me to be sexy in verse.

I count on my pen to know everything first
And words last!
Dated words serve the permanence
my scattered mind can't find.

But I can't seem to write
about you.

I've tried.

I sit and anti- cipate the usual flurry

the fury

of heart pour- ing metaphor

and then stripping it down to the plainest version of itself.

Grabbing bottles from a shelf

I mix up a Metaphor Therapy:

An ounce each of love and grief

pour it over melodrama and an icey simile

It's a lot but once it melts into verse, I find

I can finally take it in.

(To be truly effective at squelching my fear,

we go more rounds than I care to share

or you’d care to hear

but I do recommend it.

Mornings are kinder than Xanax and vodka.)

And so the point I can’t write-
The point you haven’t heard-
The point of all these words is that
I've been trying to write about you since I met you.

And also for the last three hours.

When this poem began I wrote that I was sitting on the Amtrak

staring at a half-pink sunset

slivered moon like a skipping rock

moving across a skyline of tree-tops
a few thin clouds in an azuline sky.

But now? The sky is black

and I'm asking for another drink.

If you sit too long
and think too much

the spice fades out to water.

Words I won't show you sit
like drips on my pen
at the edge of my lips
timid toes testing the temperature of my tongue
denying poetry or quips
Words are permanent
but my thoughts are inconstant as the moon!

and better trusted moving slow.

I know this makes me less a Romeo

but I've been practicing my steps for a long, long time
and I'm not going to take you dancing

on some sad, pathetic, stuttering-forever.

Please stay.
I'll get you another drink.
No ice okay?
(You might have to hold it awhile.)