by Jarrett Thompson
There is a controversy seeding in me;
the lines drawn on the palms of my hand
tell a story and Ain’t I a lover?
My head, filled with hopes and dreams,
I put more time into planning my
then than I did my now.
My heart is filled with your blood;
my pressure beats to your rhythm,
creating symphonies, aesthetically and vocally.
I reminisce on the day we met, how good it felt
to love you and me at the same time and Ain’t I a Lover?
Man said that men ain’t supposed to show emotion;
love is the act of doing without reciprocity.
Man said that words are the gap
between man and woman; because while
she holds onto every word,
man moves to brainstorm.
Here I am,
sitting in a dark room, alone, aging.
I’m 35, and I haven’t found anything to live for.
I write to keep my thoughts intact,
I read to memorize the rhyme schemes.
It is not too often that I leave my cellar;
the rays of the sun burn my skin.
The cold of the night stops my heart,
I stay in one place so that I can write.
I write best in my mind when I am asked to recite a rhyme,
when I am required to state an ideology.
I ramble when I am alone in my cellar thinking about my
own shortcomings as a man.
Here is when I feel most alive because I know
that while there are people of the world marching in one accord,
I am of the world beating my own drum and writing my own lyrics.
I wonder what is wrong with love that it is not befitting enough to please any prospect. I ponder if love became so available
that no one person desires the very thing that is at their fingertips? Love.
Why is it so easy for a child to look at an old box of matches and
imagine a race car?
Why is it that I can see myself in this cellar as bones rotting,
I imagine myself as a part of the ground.
I can hear the leaky faucets and squeaky pipes
I see the playful mice.
I can see the cob-webs forming on the wall
as the basement spider weaves his way up and down
the center of the web where the stout of the web began.
I look onto a blank piece of paper and begin to write;
this will be a letter to my depressor.
“Dear lover, you said
that no matter when the
season changed, I could
look to my left, then to
my right and it would
be your scent blowing in
the wind. I did not succumb
to this life inside
of a cellar without first
experiencing the world.
My love, I was assured
that it would be your
image in the sky guiding
me towards the North
Star where you’d shine
in case I get lost in you.
I followed you! I let you
lead me here writing
angrily because according
to your words
my love wasn’t obvious
enough. It wasn’t feminine
enough or it was
too masculine. My love
wasn’t skinny enough,
all the while slim enough
to please you. It gets cold
down here in this old
cellar and all I can do
is recount how bad you
were but so God damn
good all at once.”
I remember the first day we met;
you made me feel like I was a marvel but I wondered
if that was a good thing. Built like a Cadillac
with a smile as big as the red sea. I’ll never forget
the way you would clasp your tiny hand inside of mine as
if my hands were that much bigger than yours.
Afraid to let myself love you back,
I hid from you and now I write to keep you alive in my mind.
This cellar is where I house all of my insecurities,
my fears, my love of love, and my passion for you.
I will never leave this unless I am leaving it for you.