Spontaneous Poem for My Girlfriend

I’m a big fan of compact discs

and their tunes and the way they

express all of the things I never thought to say.

I’m a big fan of folf discs

and how it makes me wonder if I

really am that good or maybe that bad

or if chance has a bigger role than I would like to think.

I’m a big fan of orange juice

because it doesn’t spill and bleed

from my truck like a coconut pin-cushion.

I’m a big fan of kisses from Kami

because they are as soft as her nature

and as hard as her tears and somewhere in between

those two places I find myself in love.

I’m a big fan of times alone with

my music and my memories and knowing that

it is actually the unseen presence that I enjoy

most about these times.

I’m a big fan of sleep, though I

think I will be a bigger fan of sleeping naked

beside my wife and feeling too awake to sleep.

I’m a big fan of other people’s poetry because

it usually isn’t as simplistic as all this.

I’m a big fan of hard times because when I have a great girlfriend whom I love and I remember crying in front of my parents at the age of twenty and telling them that I didn’t think that I was capable of loving anyone because I had dated many girls and of them all I had not loved a love that would make me swallow my pain that would make me want to buy roses that would make a casual touch an all-day throb that would leave me smiling at night after a day where I scratched a CD, played terrible at folf, spilled orange juice that ran like oil into the milk and dream of kissing Kami and sigh because she isn’t with me and the thought makes me forget that I am supposed to sleep and I’m not reminded of other people’s poetry because no one could describe the way she makes me feel.

June 15^th, 1999

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