Lo(ve)

by David Clarkson
(Bowling Green, Ohio)

In the corners of my mind
are the words I want to say to you.
I’ve been awake for three days but I’m
always dreaming of those moments when I
wake up and see you bathed in morning light.
Those are the times when three words are easy to
say in their beautiful simplicity.
They transcend time and space and the
fleeting desires I’ve feasted on for the last twenty years.
Long gone are the days of unrequited longing,
the days where I scratched and clawed, where I was
chomping at the bit, desperately craving for something real.
Well this is real, as real as it gets.
Sharing the same breath, breathing life into
this corpse once only capable of putting the pen to paper
in anger, in sadness, in solitude, in storm and stress.
Treading water on desert concrete,
walking home with a silence better left unsaid.
Empty words could feed an army who breaks bread
during the raging monotony of the week. The grinding
stone of the daily grind wears down the distance between
a beautiful us. An us so beautiful that those three words,
though all encompassing, fail to envelop, no,
fail to capture the radiance of the morning light slipping in between
the filters of the pitter patter in between our two beating hearts.
So cry your drunken tears Pretty Lady and I’ll wipe away
the falsities of your inebriated emotions and find what I’ve
been looking for all this time. The violet tulips planted
before the birth of a nation have bloomed under the mild
ferocity of the November sun.