Love Poem 9
My brain works a little bit differently
than the brains of others and
it usually has
a hundred different thoughts happening
at the same time.
They aren’t racing or fighting with one another,
but they are all competing for my
limited focus
and that can
make life difficult when it comes to sorting out
what to say
or
not to say
or do
or
not do
and I try my best with it, though
I know
there are many times where
what is right
and
what is hard
is not what I do because I choose instead
to do what is easiest.
Not just what is easy,
but what is easiest
and what is easiest rarely yields that which is
most beautiful or
most bountiful.
Usually, what is easiest ends up being
unnecessarily hard or needlessly complex.
Instead of saying
I love you,
I spend a good minute trying to
extrapolate
what might happen
if
what could happen
when
and what I can do to find a way
to stay safe
and
to stay whole
and
to keep my crab claws dragging across the floor of the ocean
away from everyone else
unless I need to connect with someone somehow
and then it is about how do I find a setting
where I know
every entrance
and every exit
and where I can know
how many hours are in a day
and how many minutes are in an hour
and how many seconds are in a minute
because,
as you can see,
my mind is dominated by the self-made complexities that
I allow to comprise my life
instead of focusing on the
bounty and beauty and simplicity
existing within someone saying
I love you
you are funny
what a great smile you have.
I forget that love is what I have
spent my whole life searching for.
I forget the quest for truth is the quest to find
union and unity,
to seek the middle of the middle,
to find a place where there is only light
and where there is such wholeness that even
void and shadow
do not exist separately.
So, all of those cold nights I spent howling at the moon,
all those hot nights I roamed the street,
all those long winters and long summers that felt like they
would never end
and saw me roil and rage
as I shifted from man to wolf to man to wolf to man to wolf,
so lost that not even the phases of the moon could hold sway
over my spirit.
Please know the disconnect lies in my
different alignment to the norm.
Please know my beautiful, fragile mind
tries its best to shield an equally beautiful and fragile heart
and exponential complexity allows for shields and walls
to grow from the ground as if they were hedges and trees
seeking to protect an old growth heart.
Also know, if nothing else,
my mind similarly holds love
like a crystal glinting in the sun,
with a thousand thousand thousand sides to it.
Maybe that, in turn, complicates my life more than it needs to be
but nothing I ever do can be simple,
not even the simplest thing like
unconditional love.
