Love Poem 3

I used to wake up on friends’ couches

whether I lived near or far.

The imposition never bothered me.

After a night of boozing, getting home wasn’t

EASY,

but the Long Walk is one I have made

a thousand,

two thousand

times in one way or another.

I remember a day it was sunny, and the summer, too, which made

a big difference from Walking in the blistering cold that

could kill you

if you’re unlucky

and I remember sweating out that old hangover sweat and thinking

boy, if today is the day then I am okay with it.

Anyway,

I have Walked the Walk my fair share of times and I have

never felt any shame before because

what the Walk is, everyone knows,

but,

the Walk ain’t what everyone says.

Now, where the story starts is that long elevator ride down

hoping

no one gets on and smells the stale booze, stale cigarette

smoke and stale reefer sticking to me like shit to a shoe.

I try and tell myself that the Look is one of jealousy,

whether conscious or unconscious,

because when you get up and. you still have that

buzz in your guts

and you’ve ripped a bong right away and

life is good,

how can someone not be jealous?

What I am trying to write about is the feeling of being

able to take on the world

and the feeling of

being able to make it another day

and wondering if today will be the day

I will find the love that has eluded me all these years.

It’s funny to me that I think about those things on the

long elevator ride

when I am barely alive and feeling more like I

want to die than to survive.

But it’s love and falling love, those are the thoughts

swimming and floating in that sweet haze of the

Long Walk.

Everyone wants to think about the men sleeping outside

who always get passed in the morning while people

rush to the bus,

run to the train,

speed to the red light,

blow through the stop sign

on the way to a dead end and braindead job.

No one thinks about what those men have endured,

and no one wants to think about their

Long Walks

Long Lives

or their Slow Deaths.

When I pass then, I see them and I

salute them

and after I pass them, I pass the mothers out with their kids

and I

salute them, too.

I watch the mothers pull their kids closer

when they see the knights of the road and they say

“He looks like he has had a long night,”

and their kids ask what they mean by

a long night

and I sometimes wonder if the mothers have experienced one

of those Long Nights.

The answer I hear is,

“Don’t worry, honey. One day you will know what I mean.”

“One day you’ll know that feeling, too.”

As sad as that might sound, it’s probably true in the

haze of the night burning away under the daylight

and the dreaming of love and madness.

Maybe, I hope, just like the mothers,

that the kids will learn about the Long Walk and that they

will know the

Long Life

and they will have compassion for the Hard Road, the Back Road,

the Wrong Turns and Bad Directions.

Maybe they will learn about staggering down the street,

shielding their eyes from the

blinding sun

while trying to keep from vomiting everywhere.

I hope, too, that they will wander and wonder about love

and they will also tell their own children to know that

even the most Down-and-Out amongst us has a heart and even

the most Unfortunate amongst us need to know the tenderest of

touches and the gentlest of kisses.

Maybe those mothers are not warning their children, but

are remembering those sweet moments that we all chase,

those sweet moments that we can only recognize when we

ourselves are caught between moments,

find ourselves between two realities,

two points in an infinity of what-could-be’s, what-might-be’s,

what-should-be’s and what-we-want-to-be’s.

And all of this before the elevator has hit the

ground floor.

When that chime sounds and the doors slide open, and

I step into a lobby and push my way into the world, the

sun hits my skin,

the sounds hit my ears and

my head is ready to explode.

I remember this feeling isn’t all that different from

how I feel when I first feel that old ripple and rumble of

love deep in my guts.

Everything is out of whack as I take those

measured steps down the street, hoping that

I can see through the lens of love,

feel through the spectrum of hope,

exist through the eternity of compassion.

As long as the Long Walk might be, it always

feels longer than it is and it is that feeling from which

many a person has run, has turned over, has bellied up

and played dead or left themselves for dead.

But, the truth of it is that the Long Walk is always just

long enough to feel insurmountable and even with my

wealth of experience

it doesn’t make my apartment any closer, and it doesn’t

make my feet move any faster, but

one step at a time does bring relative salvation into view

and it won’t be long now until I can let that gentle haze

go and I can stop trying desperately to cling to

that which might escape me at any moment.

They say there are no atheists at the end and I,

more or less,

have to agree because I am praying with every step that

I am not the man who pukes on himself or who shits his pants.

I pray as I push the doors open and as I push the call button

for the elevator that when the doors open I will see

Saint Peter welcoming me in and telling me that here

I am safe.

The funny thing about praying to angels and gods is that

they aren’t so different from begging demons and devils.

With divine intervention it is very important to have an

airtight request

because if there is room for interpretation sometimes

you will be safe from vomiting or shitting yourself

but you might find yourself with

a trail of urine blazing down your leg as the elevator makes

its way up to your floor and then you aren’t worried about

someone smelling the liquor anymore.

Now, you are the one who showed up and pissed himself in the elevator.

So much for thoughts of love and dreams of beauty and compassion.