Affection

I don’t think I am
any less
affectionate now
than when I was 16
or even 10, awakening;
the theoretical model
still seems to ignite in practice.

So perhaps
what I mean
by the shyness you see
is my hesitance now
to unleash the damn thing.

For my love is an ocean,
vast and deep;
my love is an ocean,
ragged with reefs;
my love is an ocean,
with swells and sighs;
my love is an ocean,
you’ll drown in the riptide.

And I don’t mean
– I mean –
but I’d rather not mean…
that my love suffocates,
taking greedily,
knowing there’s a chance
you won’t be here tomorrow,
knowing there’s a chance
you might stay today,
knowing there’s a chance
of happiness,
I pounce;
I give back a stone
if you give me an ounce.

So it’s generous too
(in a desperate way),
but I’m scared now
to show it
to drive you away,
so I linger on
shyly
in glances
and blushes,
a few fumbled words
and long hesitations…
I wait to see
if
I’ll ask for your number,
say my clever line,
forget my failures
and
everything that could go wrong
this time,
long enough for you to possibly be mine.

My love is an ocean,
full of colorful pains;
my love is an ocean,
it could sweep you away;
my love is an ocean,
filling every sensation;
my love is an ocean,
dying of dehydration.

Un-A-Muse-Ing

Hrrmmm… so I haven’t been feeling the urge to write for several weeks now. I don’t know why the Muse assails me sometimes, and other times seems coy. I probably need to have some shift in my everyday life to trigger the writing, although there is plenty I could be talking about I guess. I could tell you about Frank’s wedding, although it was a very casual and brief affair, where it was either crowded and hot, or cold and spacious. I just don’t have that much to say about it… I did notice that a lot of conversations that day strayed toward talking about relationships, past and present.

One of my friends is dating Angie, the ex-girlfriend I wrote about some time back. Life is sort of messy that way: you make connections with the people you know, and sometimes that gets a bit tangled. I’m trying my level best not to be jealous, and I did manage to hang out with them and a couple of other friends without it being too awkward. It complicates matters a bit that that particular friend is the one man I have ever had feelings for; in a way it feels like two break-ups at once, although honestly they might keep the relationship open and casual so that’s not even necessarily the end of it… sometimes I feel like I’m not adapted for this modern freeform dating. In another time period I would have just been straight and never questioned it. Now I call myself “mostly straight,” or that I “prefer women.” I’m also really not sure how I feel about swingers and open relationships, it seems like you are inviting in drama and complication to an already complex social dynamic.

I haven’t been touching this topic for a while because there are some people I know I have never spoken to about my experimentation, mostly I mean family and acquaintances, and those people may have access to this blog/journal/thingy. I am generally happy to live my life as a straight guy, and to come across that way, because I really do prefer women. I’ve had feelings for a lot of women over the course of my life, but only one man. With men it’s more like two friends getting together to have a little fun, who are still just friends afterward. Maybe I’ll lose a few conservative readers after this, but there you have it. I wasn’t content to leave my boundaries unexplored, and perhaps I’m better for it… I’m different certainly.

Oh well. Life is complicated, and I spend too much of it playing games perhaps. I just don’t know how to deal with reality sometimes.

—

No poem today,
as I have other things to
distract my ego.