and if you can get it, grab as much as you can

It's been a while, friends, and believe you me, I'd rather be posting here than formatting my thesis (which has proven more difficult than it really needed to be). But rest assured: right now, I am finishing my very last assignment of the semester. And once that's through, well, you can bet I'll be back to posting pictures and open letters and accounts of days which I hope will be quite uneventful in the best of ways. Last week, Marshall and I moved back into our professor's house to dogsit for Miss Isabel, who misses her owner something awful.

Yesterday, we went on a tightly-budgeted-but-extravagant-in-its-way Christmas shopping spree, where we took a picture with Santa Claus, then bought each other silky holiday pajamas and Christmas cookie dough and the tackiest tinsel mini-tree we could find, with some truly ugly ornaments to adorn it. When we got home, we spread the branches out a little and hung the ornaments, then plugged in the pre-strung lights. Wouldn't you know it? The tree looks truly pretty when it's all plugged-in, given the proper lighting. I am alternating between hot salsa beats and Christmas songs covered by pop stars, and waiting for my girl to get home from work, and putting off this last bit of schoolwork to read poetry. I need to get back to work, so I can be through, already, but first, I thought I'd share a poem with y'all. It's from a chapbook I stole from William Matthews' son (!!!) when he visited my seminar class. I feel a little guilty for keeping the book, since I only intended to borrow it, but I just can't seem to give it up. Luckily, I'm getting much better at giving up all the things I've outgrown, the ones that stopped doing me any bit of good ages ago, but which I'd held onto anyway. This is a good time for that, I'm realizing. All I need is right here, or else on its way. Why look any further, when I've got shelves of Lori's books surrounding me, fuzzy socks and a sweet dog napping at my feet, a lovely girl coming home to me and friends who withstand every mood swing and missed connection?

Anyway, that poem. It's called "Love," and was written by Matthew Dickman. Enjoy!

We fall in love at weddings and auctions, over glasses
of wine in Italian restaurants where plastic grapes hang
on the lattice, our bodies throb
in the checkout line, the bus stop, at basketball games
and we can’t keep our hands off each other
until we can—
so we turn to rubber masks and handcuffs,
falling in love again.
We go to movies and sit in the air conditioned dark
with strangers who are in love
with heroes like Peter Parker
who loves a girl he can’t have
because he loves saving the world in red and blue tights
more than he would love to have her ankles wrapped around
his waist or his tongue between her legs.
While we watch films
in which famous people play famous people
who experience pain,
the boy who sold us popcorn loves the girl
who sold us our tickets
and stares at the runs in her stockings
every night,
even though she is in love
with the skinny kid who sold her cigarettes at the 7-11,
and if the world had any compassion
it would let the two of them pass
a Marlboro Light back and forth
until their fingers eventually touched, their mouths
sucking and blowing.
If the world knew how
the light bulb loved the socket
then we would all be better off.
We could all dive head first into the sticky parts.
We could make sweat a religion
and praise the holiness of smelliness.

I am going to stop here,
on this dark night,
on this country road,
where country songs
come from, and kiss her, this woman, below the trees
which are below the stars,
which are below desire.
There is a music to it, I hear it.
Johnny Rotten, Biggie Smalls, Johan Sebastian Bach, I don’t care
what they say—
I loved you the way my mouth loves teeth,
the way a boy I know would risk it all for a purple dinosaur,
who, truth be known, loved him.

In the Midwest, fields of corn are in love
with a scarecrow, his potato-sack head
and straw body, hanging out among the dog-eared stalks
like a farm-Christ full of love.

Turning on the radio I hear
how AM loves FM the way my mother loved Elvis
whose hips all young girls loved, sitting around the television
in a poodle skirt and bobby socks.
He LOVED ME TENDER so much
that I was born after a long night of Black-Russians
and Canasta while “Jailhouse Rock” rocked.

Stamps love envelopes, the licking proves it—
just look at my dog
who obviously loves himself with an intensity
no human being could sustain, though you can’t say
we don’t try.

In High school I once cruised
a MacDonald’s drive-thru butt-naked
on a dare from a beautiful Sophomore,
only to be swallowed up by a grief
born from super-size or no super-size.

Years later I met a woman
named Heavy Metal Goddess
at a party where she brought her husband,
leading him through the dance floor by a leash,
while in Texas cockroaches love with such abandon
that they wear their skeletons on the outside.

Once a baby lizard loved me so completely,
he moved into my apartment and died of hunger.

No one loves war,
but I know a man
who loves tanks so much he wishes he had one
to pick up the groceries, drive his wife to work,
drop his daughter off at school with her Little Mermaid
lunch box, a note hidden inside
next to the apple, folded
with a love that can be translated into any language: I HOPE
YOU DO NOT SUFFER.