All The Numbers Between One And Two

I do not love you like the annual,
or the summer rose with its cast away petals
wilting under the dry sun or curling their edges
away from the chill breath of fall.

I do not love you like the snowflake
with its ephemeral individuality.

I do not love you like the rain,
not the single drop fallen in the ocean
or the slow motion treasure
captured on film as it drips from a goblet of jungle leaves.

I do not love you like time
rushing to getting away from us,
racing us to brittle bones and arthritis
forgotten memories and stories told over and over
to whatever children will listen.
They will all be children to us then.

I love you inexplicably
like this English language
that began as French and Anglo Saxon became lovers
as they conquered one another and merged.
I love you like this evolution
this assimilation of every culture into one beautiful, blossoming
compilation of sounds and meaning for every possible thought.

I love you in this way, 
which won’t lessen or not know how it feels about you
when the future speaks an English
you and I won’t understand.

I love you like these poems transformed into pure light 
and cast from our screens into the universe, 
rippling in luminescent waves beyond our spectrum
for an immeasurable eternity.

Reasons

In the beginning

there were words.

Handshakes were words;

smiles, words; chemistry, words.

When I asked the world for love

you gave me what I loved:

words. Words like paintings,

words that defied black and white,

words like a palette for creating life.

Next, in medias res,

there was time spent, freely,

as though we are rich with time,

as though time well spent

was a spice to use liberally to add zest

to the days we seize together.

When I asked the world for love

you gave me what I loved:

time. Time on a clock

without a face or hands,

time given free reign,

given its reins, unbridled,

allowed to run.

Now, in this moment,

there is desire.

Like perfume, I breathe in

and my head is filled with desire,

desire defined and undefined

desire for the hourglass to be set on its side

or to ride in its sands

with you right beside me.

When I asked the world for love

you gave me what I loved:

desire. Desire to taste

your lips tasting the wine from mine,

desire to have you, to hold you

desire to want you, desire

to revel in you,

and finally, the desire

to revel in your desires.

Respect

Milady,

    I am not a hunter. I will not chase you. I will not trap you, nor try to break you.
    I am a lover. My door is always open, my way is invitation. Imagine it a letter, handwritten, cursive. Signed, Sincerely Yours.
    If you find me less than irresistible, I can wait for the one who doesn’t. I will not coax, nor coerce. I might court you, if you let me, but that’s not a patience we seem to have these days.
    If you say no, or nothing at all, you will find I will not try your patience. I would rather walk alone into 18,000 sunsets, celibate, than pressure a woman until she gives in, until Stockholm Syndrome wins.
    When you are ready to give, I will give in kind. With your “Fuck Yes” paired to mine, my poetry, songs, strong hands, wild imagination, my clever mind are yours. I will wrap myself so deeply where I am welcome that you will be forever changed. As I am by you. I will show you the results of every lesson I have learned from Love and we will learn thousands more together.
   But if none of that is there, I don’t mind if your way is not parallel to mine. There are many roads less traveled by and I have known too many travelers worth the wait to trespass where I am not wanted.
   I am not a hunter. I want a partner, not prey. I am a lover. If I am not your pleasure, so be it. There will be someone else to please, and the invitation is open if you change your mind. But I will not seek to go where there is no, “Yes!”
I call this, “Respect.”
   
Sincerely Yours,

Morgan

Darker Days

In Justice

Whatever happened to

innocent until proven guilty?

I may be dark but I'm not dangerous

I may be a man,

but that doesn't make me a rapist.

If I smile at her

and tell she's pretty

that's a compliment, not harassment.

I'm not monster just cause I'm quiet,

just cause I'm considerate

doesn't make me a menace.

Who knew, 

shit could get so skewed,

perspectives could come so unglued

people see demons around every corner.

I've got news for you,

I'm no angel, but I'm human too,

I'd still go out of my way to help you

if you needed a Samaritan

even as hateful as you are,

and if I could give you one gift,

I'd give you the ability 

to see the monster in the mirror,

let me say it clearer,

this isn't a rumor, Miss Monger,

the monsters are people like you.

Kepler

I'm tired of being bright,

it's so hard to be a star,

when you can barely see my dying light

by the time I hit your narrow-sighted eyes

I may be gone,

I'll be gone. 

I'm so sick of shining,

sick of hoping, holding my head high,

I'm tired of trying to keep

this piece of shit planet alive.

Are you ready for my supernova?

When you burn in my fire

the universe won't weep

it won't even know we're gone.

Are you ready for my collapse,

It's not just you, I'm taking it all with me,

I'm gonna be a black hole,

I'm gonna be a force 

maybe the destruction of the universe.

I'm gonna be a black hole

The gravity you can't deny.

Make Me

Don't just make me your poet,

I don't want to settle 

for being something as mediocre

as a writer of couplets

even if they're iambic. 

Make my poem

a part of your poetry,

so thoroughly entwined 

in your experience of the poetic

that I am Pablo Neruda

when you read of love,

I am John Donne

when you read of angels, 

I am Shakespeare

when you read his immortal verse.

Don't just make me your heart,

make me romance,

the rose on your pillow,

the taste of a Malbec 

and its color staining your lips.

Make me your dances,

every partner a partner at a masquerade

wearing the illusion of my face.

Make me the percussion you move to,

the melody you sing

and when I am part of everything,

every verse of every poem,

every Valentine's, every wine,

and every single song,

you'll have made me yours.

A White Valentine

The world is ready

for her Valentine tonight.

She's chosen to go with purity,

the little white dress

instead of the black.

But not for a second

should we forget this snowy wrap

is just a facet of her beauty.

Magma still runs hot in her veins,

tectonic plates shift beneath the surface

she still fosters life 

and cradles us in her arms

from the beginning to the end.

No matter how her cloth

brings to mind the image of a bride

A dress is still just something worn,

adornment for the woman within.

She is still Goddess of the Earth,

naked under the twirling hem

as she dances with the sun and moon

across the starry sky.

She is still

thousands upon thousands

of first kisses, first loves, 

broken hearts, decades of marriage,

still the first love, her first time, the first night.

She is mother and lover, daughter,

wife and the lonely romantic,

still waiting for her knight.

The world has pulled a sparkling shawl of snow

over her shoulders,

dressed to the nine's in white

she is ready for tonight.

The Knowings I've Known

I wish I still knew 

all the knowings I've known.

Today I know new knowings,

knowings I never knew I did not know.

Spectacular knowings. Boring knowings.

Emotional knowings. Factual knowings.

I wonder if today would have been different

if I knew those knowings yesterday.

Yet while I love knowing all these new knowings,

all this new knowing is still incomplete.

There are so many unknown 

knowings to know,

so many knowings that I've never known, 

and one set of knowings I know that have gone.

It saddens me.

You see, there are so many knowings

I know I know, that I know I knew,

knowings only an eidetic mind could still know.

So, while I'm happy to know 

all that I know

I wish I still knew 

all the knowings I've known.

The Feng Shui of Bachelorhood

According to my mother, women judge the depth of a man’s readiness for a relationship on the arrangement of his furniture. (And other things, of course.) The specifics of her belief have always been conveyed to me regarding the placement of my bed. She feels that a bed placed in a corner suggests to a woman that he’s not ready for an equal partnership. In such a situation, one partner always has to get in first/last. On the other hand, she is of the opinion that if the aforementioned bed is placed in the center of the wall with access on both sides, it suggests the man is ready to actually share that bed with someone. In her world, women pay attention to this kind of thing. Since she’s a woman and apparently pays attention to bed placement, I assume there must be other women who share this perspective.

She probably has a point. I have a friend in his early twenties who is an amazing cook with a rather Spartan apartment. While hanging out with him and eating over a time or two, he has one extremely noticeable piece of furniture lacking. He doesn’t have a kitchen table of any kind. Honestly, he doesn’t really have room for one, but even one he could put away in a closet when it wasn’t needed would, in my opinion, be a good idea. It seems to me that in a decent search to end his bachelorhood, this is something a woman might notice.

When I describe him as an amazing cook, I honestly think his cooking good enough to woo any decent woman with. He’s a bigger guy and a computer programmer, but reasonably active, and his gourmet is so good that he could probably land a drop dead gorgeous girl, just with the food. He has other merits as well, but I can’t emphasize enough the quality of his meals.

I find myself wondering, however, if that noticeable lack of a dining table wouldn’t hamper his cause were he actually trying to woo a woman worthy of him. (Drop dead gorgeous or otherwise, I realize looks aren't everything). Not because a woman worthy of him wouldn’t overlook something “small” like that, but due to the impression he might be giving off. Arguably a man who doesn't even own a kitchen table could be perceived as not quite ready for the rigors of sharing adult life with a partner. This is assuming my mom’s idea of the feng shui of bachelorhood is accurate.

Thanks to my education in English Literature and rhetoric, I pay a lot of attention to what small things like clothing, furniture, et cetera say about people, so this all may just be the result of me being hyper-observant.

So, I’m curious. Ladies, what do you think about the Feng Shui of Bachelorhood? Does the idea have merit, or is it ridiculous?

Untitled

I always did enjoy derailing your thoughts,
spinning them round with words
til up was down and the stars
traded place with Earth
and galaxies idled by
as your mind wandered
lost on the wake of supernovas.

Chase the Storm

If I could take the rainbows
Shining in the lights upon the snow
I'd put them in a ring for you
I wouldn't hesitate
Why wait
I'm tired of being patient
Why wait?

While we're still young
While our hearts still beat fast
and our blood's still warm
Let's chase the storm
Let's chase the storm.

I want to love you
Like we're in one of those movies
Where it's raining lace
You're a magnet
For a thousand kisses
There's no reason why we should wait.

While we're still young
While our hearts still beat fast
and our blood's still warm
Let's chase the storm
Let's chase the storm.


Copyright 2014

Tar Baby

Reach in

deep into the sap of me

until you find a piece of amber

fossilized by the heat seeping off

the magma of unerupted fury

that runs beneath the silent, tectonic pressure

of stress-taut muscles and fear clenched teeth.

Reach in 

until your arms are lost 

up to the elbows

in my darkest self and strangest secrets.

Reach in 

and close your eyes

until you know me without them.

Sight will only blind you 

when you're seeking in the dark.

Reach in.

Burn yourself on the worst of me,

then heal,

and never let me go.

Sacrifice

You can have my heart.

I'll give it all away.

You can have your freedom

to wear someone else's chains.

I don't have to have you

to love you like I do.

I will watch as you move on, dear,

if that's the road that calls to you.

I'm the quiet, watching one,

the pillar you can lean on

when the world knocks you off your feet.

And I will be, indefinitely,

a foundation to support you,

but a foundation is hard to see.

I've always been the patient one.

Maybe that's why I'm still waiting,

but I have so much to give someone

who isn't in a hurry.

I'd rather you took the time 

to know my darknesses, dance my light,

waltz around my yin and yang,

and love me for both the black and white.

For once I want to be the chosen.

When it comes time for you to choose

don't leave me the way you always do,

cracked but not quite broken.

For once I want to be the chosen.

When it comes time for you to choose,

choose me for the rooftops, the dreams come true.

Choose me for loving you enough to let you go,

the first time and the second.

Windmill #3: Honesty

Being honest with ourselves may be one of the most difficult tasks we’ll ever face. We shroud the truth in layer after layer of obscuring false trails, afraid to look it in the eye. Our truth is a Gorgon, we fear, and in that fear we are already petrified.

I see it, buried in the spaces between words and lines as a friend spills out line after line of truly personal details. There is an edifice built around everything she is not saying, a vault where the reality of the situation is tucked away. That truth, the one buried, is ultimately empowering, but all the signs on the walls of this monument say, “Here Be Dragons,” “Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here.” The signs are lies penned in fear and the stone walls of this cairn is only a house of cards.

I see it in my own self-reflection. The truth is a mountain, its peak veiled in clouds and I carve passes to either side, so close to reality that it’s hard to say I’m not on the mountain. But I don’t climb. I don’t take pick and piton and rope and set out to surmount my trepidation. How much easier to walk the paths along the gentle slopes at the base.

This mountain isn’t just a metaphor. It is Mount Fuji, the mountain I stared at from my apartment balcony for a year and never ventured to. I was afraid of it. Not the lightning storms that killed four that summer as they attempted what I did not. I was afraid of the aches and pains and too-taut muscles of my body and the strain I might put on them. The same fear I used as an excuse to avoid a military career. The excuse I use to avoid taking up running for exercise. I’ve always been one who claimed I didn’t have fears. It isn’t true. The truth is I have many fears and I’ve been afraid to face them. If I face my fears, I might be ashamed by them. I am afraid I will let myself down.

Fear is exhausting. It’s fatiguing. It wraps us up in a safe little word and we’re so excited to be sheltered that we don’t know that our breath is constricted, that our chest rises and falls, but so, so shallowly.

What amazes me most about this is how much simpler the truth makes things. How unfettered we are when we accept the truth and weed out all the crap that hides it.

What amazes me is that I’ve used so much flowery, vague language and metaphor and kept myself from truly talking about what I actually want to explore. This one’s going to take a while.

The War - M0RG4N

I haven't fallen in love in ages

think it's due to this war that wages

between my too complacent present

and my discontented past.

I've been too caught up in ghosts

with diamonds on their fingers

you'd think they'd start to fade in time

but something lingers, something always lingers.

I never saw myself here

wearing out familiar trails

on a too familiar map

I never saw myself here

walking down these worn out roads

with no company but my own

My heart's all out of shape these days

all hope and good intentions

but no real exercise.

My heart's all out of practice

and I'm too tired to go the distance

to do more than fantasize

I never saw myself here

wearing out familiar trails

on a too familiar map

I never saw myself here

walking down these worn out roads

with no company but my own

I haven't fallen in love in ages

think it's due to this war that wages

on and on and on and on

between my present and my past

She Ain't Perfect - M0RG4N (lyrics)

She Ain't Perfect 

When she smiles 
her teeth ain't straight 
but I don't care, (be)cause 
when she smiles 
I can't see straight

Got something 
on her cheek 
looks like a bruise beneath 
the makeup 
when I ask, she laughs 
the blemish, it don't detract 
Like Bruno Mars says 
she’s amazing 
just the way she is

And I don't have to have her 
just want to treat her like she matters 
I love her diamond 
and I love her rough 
she's beautiful 
from every angle 
don’t know if anyone else can see it 
but she's cut just right for me

I love her diamond 
and I love her rough 
her charisma is a prism 
casting rainbows on the walls 
its her flaws that make her flawless 
and I don't care if she is square 
beveled, pear, or princess 
she's cut just right for me

And I don't have to have her 
just want to treat her like she matters 
I love her diamond 
and I love her rough 
she's beautiful 
from every angle 
don’t know if anyone else can see it 
but she's cut just right for me

After the Fall

After the Fall

The evergreens, brave sailors all,

ride full sail into the first snow,

beams bent from proud masts

as they weather the season's storms,

charted on an immutable course toward spring. 

The deciduous, already winter-moored,

make of the forest a quiet harbor

where boats rock gently in the breeze.

These are the ships of summer,

all signs of life tucked away

beneath the blizzard's taut tarp

while icicles form stalactites on twiggy spars

and grasp their bony frames.

The earth below, now a sea of frozen waves,

drifting frost-jewels flooded across a new-hushed world.

Cozy, it turns and dreams 

beneath its blanket lily-white

waiting still for ever colder nights

when she, the world, 

and her snowy forest fleet

will glimmer in the moonlight.

Woman

Woman, how we have failed you.

I’m not the perfect man. I’m no prince on a white horse. If I’m a knight at all, I’m a knight in ill-fitting, dented armor. I have lost my fair share of jousts. I’m picky, and on the surface, I seem shallow. I have my preferences and at face value they very well may seem like appearance is far too important to me. I won’t apologize for them, because they’re mine, and I am content to like what I like. If you’re curious, my taste in women is like my taste in music. Eclectic, but with a preference for a general type. I like petite women, but that’s neither here or now. (And alternative rock, if you're really curious.)

What I am not, is the man who is going to tear you down because you don’t suit my tastes. I owe you more respect than that, whoever you are, however you’re built. I owe myself more respect than to treat you like you have failed me by not living up to my expectations. The problem here isn’t you. It’s the man who expects you to fit his expectations and takes it out on you instead of owning his opinions and preferences. 

Woman, I am sorry. How we have failed you. How we have broken so many of you with our failure to take responsibility for our own tastes. How have we broken so many of you? Who taught you to have such misplaced respect for the thoughtlessness of men? What men in your past failed to build you up as you deserved, what women failed to teach you to respect yourself beyond the weight of a man’s opinions?

This apology isn’t license for complaint. I have no sympathy for the woe-is-me of the dissatisfied pouring out their bitterness on Craigslist. The rampant insecurity is, quite frankly, exhausting, and exponentially less attractive than any physical feature that is either in excess or lacking. Whoever said the most attractive thing a woman can wear is her confidence had it right. (That goes for men as well.) Wear it like baseball player’s lucky underwear.

Woman, I can give you nothing but my own perspective. My raw, honest, 90-degree from the stereotype perspective. If you take something from that perspective, I don’t want it to be simply the literal weight of my words. Take the understanding that different people want different things. Take the understanding that there’s someone out there who thinks your body is beautiful, who loves your broken nose or your button nose, someone who desires a woman just like you.

One of my major incongruities with the drooling, poorly mannered slobs who treat women as though they are tools for masturbation rather than partners in life, activity, and joyful acts of mutual exploration, is that I’m not particularly fond of large breasts as a rule, and certainly almost entirely against the concept of aesthetic surgery excepting reasons of health and reconstruction. I have an eye for subtle detail and smaller breasts do not detract from the natural shape of a woman’s structure. I enjoy their sensitivity, the lasting nature of their perkiness, and find the most fascinating curve of a woman has much more to do with the line of her ribs as it gives way to the valley of her waist before rising with the swell of her hip.

It astounds me how many of the women I meet who take my breath away honestly believe the mirror is their worst enemy. Women blind to the fact that every eye in the room has noticed her, whether she’s in yoga pants or an evening dress. Women convinced that they are, in their own words, undeserving of attention and simply unattractive.

Who did this to them? Who cut them down? Who cut them short and belittled their beauty as they grew? Who was it that failed to get the message when they read the story of the Ugly Duckling and pecked at her self-esteem until she failed to recognize the swan when her feathers finally turned white?

It makes me livid.

I am sorry we have failed so many of you. You deserve better. You deserve to wear push-up bras, water bras, no bra and have the gentleman for whom you want to take them off enjoy you as you are. You deserve to have him be happy you let him see you without one in the first place instead of being a total cock-fuck who thinks its okay to treat a woman like she’s just the grass on this side of the fence. You deserve to know, without getting vain or prideful about it, that you are beautiful and desired by men who want you, just the way you are.

Woman, how we have failed you.

I can’t give you anything but a promise to be the change I want to see in the world. I’ll hold that door for you, I’ll treasure your gifts to me, offer you my vision of the swan you are and ask for nothing in return. I won’t take you for granted. I won’t tear you down when you’ve granted me your vulnerability, passion, and intimacy. When I teach, when I talk, I’ll try to be the actions louder than words, an example, and pass on the respect you deserve from other men. When the moment calls for it, I. will. demand. it. from them. You deserve no less.

I recently started teaching a new follow how to dance. She asked what she owed me in exchange for her first lesson and I told her the pleasure of her company was enough. The truth is I’d do it just for the chance to stare into her eyes. They may be the most beautiful brown eyes I’ve seen in my entire life. And that's enough.

-m0rg4n