Hotel Rooms

The heart has long known
that secret that stole life,
and the universities,
from German mathematicians.
Infinity beyond infinity,
love doubled, until
it suffuses the soul.
The first sip from that eternal cup
takes one by surprise.
Quiet moments,
illuminated in the dawn.
Or the strident passions,
of those first steps
into intimacy;
Sharing everything,
souls pressed close
against souls,
everything shared;
pain and rage and happiness.
Double what is in your heart
and you will know my heart.
The infinite hotel
is doubled
and all the rooms are filled
again.

I'm sorry to say, I've forgotten the name of the German mathematician in question. I'll get back to you with it. However, the concept of infinity beyond infinity can be explained through the metaphor of a hotel with infinite rooms: Imagine a hotel with an infinite number of rooms. An infinite number of guests show up and fill the infinite number of rooms. Imagine that then, another infinite number of guests show up. How are we going to fit them all in? Each person already in the hotel, moves over two rooms. This opens up an infinite number of rooms for the infinite number of guests that has just shown up. Cool, right?

Bilingual

These are my words:
You call them nonsense,
gibberish,
gobbledy-gook.
These words are using music,
art,
poetry.
But it is uncivilized,
it isn't written down,
you can't read it.
"Use your words."
No, use your words.

 

Burden

Like a father,
he beats his children,
he calls them names
and tells them he loves them.
Like a father,
he lets his brothers touch them,
he lets his brothers rape them.
Like a father,
he yells when he doesn't understand,
he steals their words and secrets.
Like a father,
he crafts them in his own image,
he tears them down and only lets them grow
in ways he deems appropriate.
Like a father,
he teaches them to love him,
and they learn to hate him.
Like a father,
he hurts them and whispers,
"This is for your own good."

Today we have poems about colonialism. And possibly childhood. But also, and mostly, colonialism. YAY!

Eulogy for Soft Hips

I wish you still knew
that you were the one
who got away
That I still dream
of your curves
That you were going to be
the one
all my heroines were based on
But you conspired with them
to take away
one more curvaceous beauty
from the world

And you disappear
wrapped up
in the narcissism of
your appetite
So I disappear
into the narcissism of
art
Observing my chest
and the way my thighs jiggle
And I let your buxom beauty
slip away
like you let it
slip away
Obsessed with thinness
and the unnatural
lies they sold you

I wish you still knew
that you used to be beautiful.

Love Poem

The muscles of our love atrophy
I watch the sentiment between us,
watch as is slowly, slowly, begins to rot
smelling of silence and distrust
oozing the pus of discontent,
your doubts, like maggots eating away
at its rotting flesh,
turning into flies, that buzz,
incessant
like my doubts.


I watch you struggle
with the clasp of your dress
in the mirror,
as I struggle with the knot of my tie.
Our eyes slide past each other,
and we leave, late, and arrive,
later.
Ignoring each the other,
the niggling presence,
I am the shadow in the corner of your eye,
you are the shuffling sound,
catching on my ears
as I focus elsewhere.

I don't know if these are two poems or one.