First and Ninth

years ago in a hopeless place

“I want to be a lost poem in a stranger’s coat pocket, that conveys the importance of you.

To assure you of my desire, to assure you of dreams. I want all the possibilities of you in writing.

I want to give you your reflection, I want your eyes on me, I want to travel to the lightness with you and stay there, and I want everything before you…

…everything before you to follow us like a trail behind me.

I want never to say goodbye to you, even on the street corner or the phone.

I want, I want so much… I’m breathless.

I want to put my power into a poem to burn a hole in your pocket so I can sew it.

I want my words to scream through you. I want the poem not to mean that much.

And I want to contradict myself by accident, and for you to know what I mean.

I want you to be distant and for me to feel you close, I want endless days when it’s day and… nighttime never to end when it’s night.

I want all the seasons in one day. I want the sun to set before us and come up in front of us.

I want water up to our waists and to be drenched by the rain, up to our ankles with holes in our shoes.

…with holes in our shoes. I want to think your thoughts because they’re mine.

I want only what’s urgent with you.

I want to get in the way of the barriers and I want you to be a tough guy when you’re supposed to, like you do already.

…when you’re supposed to. And I want you to be tender, like you do already.

And I want us to have met for a reason and I want that reason to be important.

And I want it to be bigger than us, I want it to take over us.

I want to forget. I want to remember us.

And when you say you love me I don’t want to think you really mean New York City, and all the fun we have in it.

And I want your smile always, and your grimaces too.

I want your scar on my lips, and I want your disappointments in my heart.

I want your strength in my soul and I want your soul in my eyes.

I want to believe everything you say, and I do.

And I want you to tell me what’s best when I don’t know.

And when you’re lost I want to find you.

And when you’re weary I want to give you steeples and cathedral thoughts and coliseum dreams.

I want to drag you from the darkness and kneel with you exhausted with the blinding light blaring on us… and…”

Tags: assured dreams, breathless, Chelsea Walls, poems