Love Letters In The Internet Age

In my dream you have no hands
We stand together on a cliff.
I stretch my long arms wide around you,
My ribs and my hips are narrow and delicate,
My hands spread flat and strong behind you
heavily hanging off my wrists- like insults
I try to hide them. He said ‘Poets have always been published

The ‘you’ in the sonnet has always been universal and personal at once.
There’s the 'you-who-was-stripped-by-the-poet'
Of your white petticoats and corset, by candlelight.
And there’s another you- 'you-reading-it.'

You picked it up, a poem written in ink and smudged by rain
Blowing on the wind near a theater.
You are less beautiful in person than you are on the page.
You lady, might be reading about yourself.
You inspired and slept with and angered the poet.
These are not so special-
The love letters of the internet age- they are not a part of the new narcissism. I mean,

Since the beginning of poems it's always been possible
to nail the note to a tree
Along side a path where you know she will pass.

Some pointers: It does need to be a tree
Where once you stood together
And discussed how, should you ever send a love letter,
You would nail it to this tree
And she should keep an eye out just in case.

When you leave it its for her and not for her at once,
Since you will never come back to see if she’s left you a response.

A secret: those dreams, they aren’t yours.
You never were seen handless in my dreams, we never stood on a cliff.
Poems are easier than essays and prettier than anger.

Some pointers: the way to read this poem
Is to be every single YOU at once.

A secret: There are many of you and though it was you who was handless in my dream
You reminded me of him, the way you didn’t move and didn’t meet my eye
And had thin biteable lips. And I felt
Guilty like a thief but glad to be a thief. And I woke up thinking of him
But this poem is for you.

In the morning the light is blue in the white washed hallways and bedrooms.
The curtains are cheap and thin and they block out the light but not the wind so they flutter and the light is let in in bursts.

into the internet

The back of the couch makes a little ledge of wood
between the cushions and the wall.
I put my glass of water there
and think 'I will forget this is here
and I will knock it over and it will smash on the radiator.
I forgot it was there and when it smashed on the radiator I was so startled...

I feel that need to confess things
Into the Internet
but I am out of poetry,
For once I really want to say it as it is.
But poetry is the camouflage
So without it I'm not allowed
To say anything.

Unless I chance it:
I miss the way you made me feel and I want to feel that way again
I know that if anything more had happened it would have come to nothing.
but since its come to nothing anyway I would have preferred for more to have happened.
Just because of the adrenaline... I liked the adrenaline a lot.
I think about you now when I run through red lights,
or slam on my breaks to avoid a squirrel.

When I jump out of planes and off of bridges, hanging from parachutes and bungee cords I shut my eyes
and as the bones over my heart tighten, as I struggle to breathe,
I think about my knee touching your knee under the table.