Slap

I want to write my lover a poem but a very bad one. It'll include a giant squid and some loose change and cuff links and two blue ferries chugging headfirst on the East River at twenty-six knots and only at the last minute averting disaster through quick thinking and sure reflexes. Also a bow and arrow and glossy red apple I perch in front of my heart. To be honest my lover doesn't really like poetry, which I guess is why I plan to write such a bad one, so he can feel right and strong and good in his beliefs. Tonight when I go see my lover he’ll hold me as I've never been held except by him and then I'll have to give him back. When you get new things you treat them like glass for a while and then get used to them and manhandle them like everything else. I don't want to give him back but partly it's not up to me and partly I don't want to be his old sofa. I want to radiate and gleam arrestingly until the certain, premature end. You can compose a whole life out of these rollercoasters. You can be everywhere and nowhere, over and over life slapping you in the face till you’re newly burnished flat-out gasping and awake.