The New San Francisco Poetry Underground:
Duo Von Dagrate

 
 

Duo Von Dagrate

Originally published in The Evergreen Review Issue 126 in 2011.
 
 

Love Can Exist

I left a piece of me back home with a woman who outright refused to give it back. She didn’t steal it from me, I gave it. I remember the before summer nights before she quit me it and I sulked my way into San Francisco before the first snow fell on friends left behind. I swore I didn’t need my heart and sewed up the somewhat large hole in my chest only after stuffing it with plane ticket paper and piss. And anger. And regret. With a misfits waltz, I danced away, back and forth on the notion to become a “Felo de se”. A felon of himself.
I then met you. You are radiant and a rival of the sun not only in shine, but in size. Your heart is that big. You talked to me with a smile wide enough to hold the gaza strip and i remember thinking that if it did, no one would fight there anymore. they would praise allah and yahweh beside each other for letting them be that close to your face. You are that beautiful. And after you walked away, I watched you do so and something happened..you came back. Just to sit and talk with me. Something else happened too. I saw, in my minds eye, a package from far east, containing something I gave away. And for the first time in a really long time, my heart got hard instead of my dick. You perform miracles. You are 90% aurora borealis, and 10% mystery. Drawings of you exist in caves long lost to the tide. You are Claire Huxtable in real life, and the reason people even bother make love.
Its not like I can’t live without you. I can. I want to live just because people like you exist. Love can exist. I had given up hope and this shows me how foolish I was. I want to kiss you a Million times a second. But I can wait. Time is not a stranger to me.