Just Friends

[Inspired by Disney’s Beauty and the Beast]

I watch you,
ten rows down at
two-and-a-half-feet a row
Space
enough for friendship

Courting indifference
– uncertainty, adventure,
due diligence, rebellion –
whatever sugar we’re coating it in
these days
I feel lost in a world where
blue and gold
turn grey

Just friends
until somebody takes a chance
like I did
bending to a plucked rose,
still yellow
but fraying red

Torn between
thoughts and feelings
– neither being rational –
but pretending, all the same
that the mess makes
some sort of
Sense

Senselessness,
as in, unfeeling
pricked by a thorn
outward perceptions and
melodramatic music, TV shows,
movies you care nothing for
and beauty found
in people
smaller than their
circumstances

I am smaller, too
than I ought to be
Uncertain
of that same space,
frozen, locked away

And all I want
is to turn the key
poised precariously
ashen lock – torn, yellow curtain
longing
for freedom

M.
Mar 18/17
Picture: mild steel hibiscus blossom

“I Love You Dark”

My love’s not pure nor glorious as the day
As dark and coarse as skin is fair and bright
It shines, but without light to guide its way
Not holy or of perfect, lacy white
It clads itself in simple, dirty scabs
In scars and bone and curling, muddy hair
My pulse it quickens and my hear it grabs
Without decorum, rules, or playing fair
As old as earth, as dark as dawn is light
It twists and writhes; it shudders like the frost
My love is neither perfect nor alright
But hard and dark and all too eas’ly lost
My love is simply man and shades of skin
So dark they mold this golden heart within

M.
May 13/15