3 Poems by BJ Love

The Grateful Release of Our More Robust Natures

Star Wars is on TV and all we can do is go to Dairy Queen

and dare each other into new flavor combinations, our

handholding just a gateway to Oreos and backrubs and

it all tastes really rich to me, like knowing how beavers

build their dams but wanting to hear your take on it all

anyway because I have a gnawing suspicion that today

can be totally interesting on a budget, it’s true, we can’t

go to Granada, but we can go on this walk and you look

so full of facts and I have a can full of silver spray paint

dying to be more beautiful and the world is so full of bridges

that have no ideas of love so let’s hit these purple streets

and create more famous versions of ourselves on them,

after all, this is how our histories have always been made

and love can be easily retrofitted into it, over it, and though

some people are always three steps ahead, it will be me

who gets to yell, Watch out! and pull you back into my

peeling but other wise healthy arms and tell you that

having heroes is wildly important, and feel really good

about myself and then you will thankfully kiss my silver

sprayed palms and you will see your beautiful reflection

kissing you back and you will say, boop boop, in a pretty

authentic robot voice and though translation is frequently

difficult, I will have no problems understanding exactly

what you mean, exactly what you are (not a robot), because

this language is ours and it is heartbased and sometimes

we feel, a little heart is all you need, but sometimes a little

heart is hard to draw, so I’m making mine really big, big

enough to hold our whole names and it’s a rebellion, yes

but only a minor one and if we are caught, at least they’ll

print our pictures in the paper, side by side, with a caption

that will surely say something about Love, how it leaves

its mark in the most surprising and out of the way places.

_____________

Your Name = Your Job

My heart is involved in pleasure and I’ve thrown too much

of it into the air to care where it lands. This is my real art

and I’m installing it everywhere like the ocean or the things

we believe swim there. I am moving toward a new blue, a

new place to keep my pictures, the last rays of sunlight that

are bending like some kind of arm, like some kind of

mythology. I have a feeling that will unfold in a beautiful

way.

I don’t know how it works, but I have a general sense of how

it is made and it is like making you a promise with real

working parts so that, it’s never the thing that is broken, just

a chunk of it. I have a chest full of tools ready to fiddle with

almost anything and this is turning into a grand and

fascinating dance of grand and turning fascinations.

Look hard at what we have here, it took years and monies to

make sure Einstein was right about everything he knew he

was right about, so what we are really after is relative

comfort. We take comfort. We are comforting. It’s a strange

physics, but it works. Like yellow on anything or that one

time you believed in God.

This is the history of what we do, however mystical it may

become. My heart is scattered everywhere like a mess, but it’s

this clutter that lets us know we are home. I am bending my

arms around you here and finding it to be a welcoming style

of halo. A cheap fix, maybe, but with only so many holds at

our disposal, we must keep our faith in one of them, right?

Like ghosts. Like the ghosts of each other, red and wrinkled

in our skin. We can’t know how they got there, but on the

nights we are alone, we’re glad to have them to hang onto.

_____________

P oint Break: A Synopsis Poem

Johnny Utah, you are a man, with a real heart, act

like one, says Bohdi. There is nothing but waves in

the ocean, so let us make something of it. The

differences between anxiousness and astonishment, I

fear, are lost on me, says Johnny. This is a

relationship we all know. The kind where love is the

only thing not hidden. The kind where we fire our

guns into the sky and let each other run free.

Oh, all I want, says Johnny, is a lap to lay my head in

and maybe some fingers that I can lean my eyebrows

against. Now, I feel like I should warn you, this is

where the movie gets a little sexy. Lovely even. Says

Bodhi to Johnny, I want to share this certain amount

of skin between us. To kiss us in all those ways we’d

never before considered kissing. Thereby making this

unkiss the new and most tender definition we could

hope to articulate. At least for today. I have the

feeling, Bodhi, that you are being glorious, says

Johnny.

Utah, get me too, pleads Angelo. Poor, poor Angelo,

this is also the story of your heartbreak. The thing we

must remember, though, is that everybody dies.

The ocean is no more than heaven’s reflections of

ourselves, says Bodhi, and so, I’m worried of its’

whereabouts lately. Where have we all gone, Johnny

and Bodhi scream together, but mostly alone. It’s

one thing to not recognize ourselves, but quite

another to not even know where to start, where to

fix our wandering gazes. How to live a life after I love

you.

Darling, you say you have never seen Point Break,

and, I believe you, so to the best of my recollection,

this is what that movie is about. Do you see anything

beautiful in this?

After all, you seem to prefer beautiful things.

_____________

BJ Love is the author the of the chapbooks, Michigander (Greying Ghost), and the recently released, Fossil (Small Fires), in collaboration with Friedrich Kerksieck. His poems can be found elsewhere, on and off the internet, but who cares about those when you have so much more Spork to read.