SUCCESS

Nervously chewing licorice thinking of you.
Your hair grown back into perfect balance.
Your eyes brown and alert behind glasses.
Who am I kidding that love hasn’t come my way?
Descriptors are out in poetry and your watery eyes,
Crows feet of wisdom, tall lanky form are not the stuff,
Academics lean towards. They want a quirky loss,
a meandering looming, and all I think is I want to touch you.
I want to touch you bad. This is the night when music
Comes forth teaching us to unlearn these categories.
Finally, the pizza we ate cheering us on,
And were we listening to desire or fear?
I love you like the open ever-changing sky.
And you can be a real ass.
I love you like the heat of a Colorado summer’s day.
And it is the air conditioner you prefer?
Nervously drinking coffee today, I think of you
Reading everything you can get your hands on,
And forgetting everything soon after. Both our minds
As putty, our vocabularies abrupt with our grandmother’s
Spanglish. Is it any wonder we have, as my mother says,
Ruined our lives.