The Thing About the Thing About Love

He told me the thing about love where it's like CAPS LOCK.
Like you start typing and then look at the screen and
EVERYTHING'S ALL IN CAPS and some of it misspelled.
That's with two s's: Mis-Spelled.
That the only thing
you can really do is erase all of it and type all of it over
again, without capital letters except for proper nouns,
and you have to keep it in your head, what you just said,
and then type it over again, and you can't even edit it
until you've typed it again, exactly as before,
but without capital letters.

He said this is what love is like. He knew he was being
oblique, that he was challenging me to figure out his
metaphor.
Instead of acting perplexed I, too, acted obliquely
so he would be forced to admire me, like surgery.

Perspicuity comes from a Latin root meaning
to see through, like glass, and its nearest synonym
is lucidity, and it means verbally well expressed,
clear.

I said, the thing about that is, if you use something
like Word, they actually have this thing where it's called
Change Case, and you can select all your text and have it
changed automagically into lower case.

And as I spoke I noted the carminization of his skin tone.
And he started to blurt that that wasn't the point,
just as I said,
"But that's not the point, is it?
"The thing is," said I, knowing this would lock it all up
tight like inside a vacuum cleaner bag, where you have
to exert specific kinds of effort to get in there, I said,
"I know all about all of it and I never do it either,
I convert it all back into memory and retype it,
every time."

And I knew things with him and his girlfriend wouldn't
be the same after that, and also that it wouldn't
change my situation with him, if you can call it
a situation.

Avalanches

Why is it that Venetian blinds --
Which are neither blind nor Venetian --
Create such longing -- stripes on breasts, etc. --

In the ordinarily ordinary? Bruce K. ran away
To join the cinema after seeing his lover bathed
In a pool of stripes. It doesn't even matter

If his lover was male, female, human, whatever.
This sentiment is shared by all cultures,
Except those who live in huts. Stripes are old

Hat to them. Except they don't really wear hats.
But if this were the idea, you'd get it, right?
When rocks fall on people like those stripes,

No one gets hot and bothered and goes out
To rent Last Tango in Paris, and nobody
Tangoes on their own, either, to the beat of

Boulders pummeling skiers and private
Detectives. When I see a road sign that says,
"Falling Rocks," I don't close my eyes.

Usually, it's because I'm driving, but also
It could be that I'd be driven to daydream
Venetian blinds, which incidentally

Were patented on my birthday.

Terrible Urgency

There are only two things most people won't interrupt
To answer the phone. These are shitting and fucking.

They will get up from the supper table, even if
They call it a dinner table, and then tell the caller

"We're eating dinner." Even if the caller is Mom.
Even if the dinner is reheated sushi. Ha ha.

I have one of those boxes that tells you who it is.
The caller, not the box. What I really want

Is for the box to project the name and number
On the ceiling of my bedroom, so if I'm just,

You know, gilding the lily, because I'm bored
And can't concentrate enough to read any more

Pages in that big, unportable book I've been
Obsessing over like a late period, I could

Put down the oscillating device and then
Talk to some person I know, more or less.

I'd have to remember to turn it off, though,
For when there's somebody else there,

You know, doing the you could call it a
Talking Cure, only without words,

Because I wouldn't want them to ask me
Who that was, that name on the ceiling at 0300,

Because then I'd have to tell them
About you.

spit@tarin.com
http://www.tarin.com