I Say... (p. 4)

I say…
brock bernard

What i know of this so-called ‘love’
is somewhat limited to warbling along with
nigh forgotten singers from the eighties,
hands in gloves,
wisping jazz through brass, and
creating questionable photographs and poems, yet still
clicking buttons and pens and keys,
never to the tune of any erstwhile success.
i ‘love’ to gaze in some pretentious state
of admiration into the meticulously alphabetised
books on my shelf
which i have yet to read.

It wasn’t that aforementioned, specious passion
which caused me to forget entirely
what i was going to do with the remainder of
the day that you gave me;
not the kind that got me lost in
your green eyes
that i didn’t think would make such a big deal of themselves
during that introductory
palaver over pancakes;
not the kind that made me chary
of my proclivity for daftness,
and more nervous than a fresh cup of coffee
set in front of a busy graduate student.
Much like my closet must feel
after a day’s worth of laundry,
when there isn’t an empty hanger to be seen,
i became whole again, and full of colour.

Now there is the everpresent somethingnew,
which they sang about
in those lofty rock-ballads of yore.
At least to me it’s somenewthing
of which i don’t think i can sing with a
February voice.
Rather, i write the time when we were both ill,
when Joni Mitchell sang us into a
deliquescing mass on black canvas;
i forgot which hand was mine.
Every day, i am surprised by you,
how you manage to catch me in every innocent lie,
the way that you seem to voice what my mind is scribbling in it’s pages
and you always seem to find a way to
complete what i’m supposed to be.

What i know of…
is your hair playing lambent upon my shoulder,
my cigarette smoke rising from
tangerine tendrils like wisteria caught fire,
when the only thing aflame was something behind my sternum
that i have never known.
It’s something as ubiquitous as
Grass in Amsterdam and equally wondrous,
so much so that i am not surprised that
you catch me staring at you,
evidently ensorcelled.

You remind me much of hummus in a
rainbow bowl
and everything else is just carrots to me,
only an excuse to get to you,
to touch your hand,
to hear the canorous susurrations of your voice,
to see you blush when i can’t seem to abscond with my eyes.

i thought that i was going to cry,
or perhaps float off into some airy dream
while i was waiting for you, watching
as you performed the cell-phone pace
under the lamp post,
a fantastic, refulgent dandelion
turning snow into coruscating motes falling to the ground,
only to shimmer again under slivers of
moonlight through agreeable branches.
i surprised myself that i didn’t collapse before you
very much due to the efflorescing
somethingnew.

i didn’t think that such beauty could exist,
and so close to me.
This is not to say that a word such as ‘beauty’
or any word at all could be used to describe the singular visage that is
you. Even now, you pour forth as much as i from these lines
that are just to say
that i love you, more than any pen could ever find the perspicuity to scrawl.