when you look at me,
what do you see?
a man aware?
who’s stopped and stares –
whose world is incomplete
without the memory of a face so sweet?
isn’t that the kindest flattery you could receive?
like the loser in the train in that James Blunt song
that everybody danced to at Prom
except me?
that’s what i believed
it’s the perfect mystery;
better than my father’s legacy
or an Oscar would bring me:
i’ll wait til you’re dead
before you find out what happened to me.
no one is getting younger
while the young are getting stronger.
i look at her ass as i pass at the pool and i wonder,
is that a world we’re birthed to now?
the sky a perfect shade of blue
and here at the gym is where we spend our afternoon;
living longer;
our nutritionists telling us what to consume
like a multi-million-dollar movie star,
all for a gaze to linger afar like another memory
on a shelf of jars, preserved in vinegar.
did Tom Holland look at Zendaya that way
as he strutted passed her in the studio that day?
what should i write for today?
the silence that follows
signals more than just words on a page would dictate.
say.
could.
my life so far has been an open book
if anyone cared to listen.
i’ve made pain my frisson –
like that mediocre song by that horrible band,
held-over from the last i let slip through my hands.
i’m sitting on my office chair
on the blanket it covers to catch the sweat and hair
& shit of the times i couldn’t help yours truly,
facing another empty page that degrades into self-study
“i don’t care.”
the words reverberated through the weeks
that passed since you spoke them
though they always felt like years.
i was still seething, when it was the smell
of your freshly-dyed hair that i wanted to be breathing.
it should have been a celebration.
did you ever lay with a man without your phone in hand
or in reach, just in case
what you thought was a connection was merely malaise?
i am capable of sitting around all day
doing nothing, progressively,
expecting some sugar with my coffee and cream like every man since the dawn of society.
“too sweet to be sour, too nice to be mean.”
timely.
look at me.
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she lost all that baby fat just for me.
that’s what i see
and it’s disappointing.
she didn’t have to do that, butt-ass naked
but you can’t change what isn’t yours’ to blame.
he scares me when he stares
and when he doesn’t speak to me
or when we’re side-by-side and i say “hi”
and he just outright ignores me.
she keeps it up, week after week,
while i dismiss her in reality but cling while i dream.
there isn’t anyone else
who captivates me as much
from one-hundred-and-forty-four feet away.
i don’t know, maybe ten years ago?
he’s jumped around departments more than i have
but always seems to end up just down from where i am.
no, he has a wife
and she’s nice
and i wouldn’t do anything to wreck my work life.
theory of a daskeman 