A Poem for Someone

I think of you
now and then
for moments of every minute.
Fleeting images flash
through my helpless mind
and leave my body frantically electrified
with vibrations, waves,
violent tingling aftershocks of unsummoned emotion
that leave me reeling and
high as hell in their wake.

Your shining white eyes
as they careen sidelong in my direction
and then your face follows:
A paradise of exotic features—
Perfect lips, soft and yielding
into effortless smiles and grins
and puckered small while you pensively dawdle on some thought,
head cocked.
Can these precious lips yearn for others
Or are they struck narcissistic
by their own perfection?
Your teeth must live in perpetual bliss,
ensconced in a pink Eden of flesh.
Your cheeks bare severe little mounds
made to be fondled and kissed
and loved until one discovers there lies more to be loved
in the sweet sparse forest above your shining eyes.
And if lips could explore every secret sacred crevice
of your wondrous face
then they would already have roamed
The smooth terrain of your skin,
sprinkled with whimsical splashes,
profound specks of light brown,
the canvas for this masterpiece that is your face.
Your nose is a button that longs to be pushed,
and it might squinch its approval
while your eyes mastermind the strings
to your smiling puppet-cheeks and lips,
those two chestnut storytellers
whose emotional depth is fathomless.
Then there is the matter of your hair
which to me is like the tendrils of God,
proof that all is boundless and golden
in the universe,
that chaos is indeed order,
for when I touched your hair
and am close enough to you to smell
the unbearably intoxicating scent
of your silky, shiny mane,
there are, truly, no words
that can do justice
to the infinite cocktail of chemical pleasure
and the pain of yearning
that such pleaser induces in me.
Suffice to say that your presence is
like that of a goddess.

You have danced into my twisted heart without music
and have wrung from my soul
haunting vespers of lust and magical infatuation—
jubilant smoke
that my conscious mind has not felt
in quite some time.
Energy emanates through my bones
and muscles
as if I were attached to a giant generator.
But the source of this electricity,
this dull and fatiguing love-shock,
is you, the notion of you,
the existence of you,
and the inconceivable reality that
my logic and prudence has failed me
entirely. Utterly.
When you are in my mind
(as you so often are in every minute of these recent days)
I am a child, helpless,
a fragile being,
given to fits of hysterical emotion,
without shield to stop the spears of envy
which pierce my heart,
with feet filled heavy with the lead of anxiety
and doubt,
all supported by gossamer wings of ecstasy
which set my soul alight
and carry me through every minute of the day
as if it were at the same time
my first and my last.
The day’s work has been rendered trivial,
taking lowest order
to the lugubrious daydreams
about you.
In essence, you are my drug but not of my choosing.

What else to say?
Well, now there is nothing
but yearning in my soul.
Can I hope for but a moment
where the clouds recede
and allow me to love you
the way my body and mind desire?
The way you deserve to be loved?
Fully and with appreciation of your beauty,
inner and outer,
of your mesmerizing face and body and presence,
and to your deep and serene mind,
your genuineness, your grace, your kindness,
your humor and laughter,
the gentle urgency of your faith
which, though on the surface is in contrast to my own,
I somehow love as though it WERE my own;
of your concordant humility and confidence,
both of which you betray little
yet exude in rainbows.

I cannot explain the things in my life
which I would most like to explain.
The most important Truths
escape my vocabulary,
befuddle my thoughts,
and penetrate the ambivalent
depths of my weary soul.
But it is these Truths, such as Love,
as affinity and the belief in transcendent beauty,
that drive me to write poems
when I have usually no cause to do so.
It is such with all ballads,
Which are paeans to Life,
worship of the most basic beauties
in all reality.

But I give myself pause to reflect
And protect my heart
From the hurt it could be dealt,
has been dealt before
by incalculable attractions
of the heart and head—
by my caprice
and passion
disaster has in the past
shattered the hopes
of some hopeful lovers—
our tragedy has been the greatest,
owing to the lamentable fact
that you haven’t been my love.
And shall it be with all the unrequited.

For it is not possible I think
to tell you
the impact of your first touch
upon my skin, my hand,
that burned me and sealed my fate to you,
so that now I write a rambling love poem
that may or may not be sent at the right or wrong time,
that may ruin my chance to be with you
in the way I want,
in the way I feel I need to be.
I sacrifice my sanity and sabotage my chances
just so that I might tell you
how much I think of you now.

Moment to moment.
You are in my mind.