Transcript
Speaker: Hi everyone, this is Keshe.
Speaker: Welcome to The Modern Poet, the spoken word podcast.
Speaker: For this week's episode, I would like to share poets that I've known since college.
Speaker: This has been a very significant poem for me.
Speaker: because I resonated to it then.
Speaker: And I love this poem so much because this poem has made me feel seen and heard.
Speaker: This poem is Love Poem by Mary Fonz.
Speaker: This poem is for the pillow clutchers.
Speaker: For those looking into the imaginary eyes of the person who fills their mind with sugar plum smiles.
Speaker: for those who have a canon of dreams ready and waiting to blossom, for the men and the women who want to be understood in that way that only someone who kisses you can understand you.
Speaker: This poem is for you.
Speaker: This poem is not for the desperate, the pathetic, the lame, the loser, not for the one who hasn't gotten laid in a while, not for the one who says they're choosing not to date for a while.
Speaker: There's no such thing.
Speaker: This poem is for the people who cannot bring themselves to admit that they would give the right leg for any length of time with a person on their mind.
Speaker: Forgive me.
Speaker: I am not a brave woman.
Speaker: I do not know what lurks in the hearts of humans and I don't really want to know if what's there mirrors memories I show
Speaker: my face on bad days.
Speaker: It holds kisses that are long gone.
Speaker: People who have disappeared and passions that have faded into the ether of the past.
Speaker: Nothing lasts.
Speaker: And that is the one lesson this coward can say she is able to teach.
Speaker: This poem is for all those who wish to say I'm sorry.
Speaker: I'm sorry I couldn't love you.
Speaker: You deserve love.
Speaker: I'm sorry I couldn't give something to you you deserve to be given to.
Speaker: I'm sorry that for every person that loves somebody another person just doesn't want to.
Speaker: And sometimes we're the lucky ones, right?
Speaker: We get to feel sweet truth in the night.
Speaker: The bodies we reach out to are miraculously there.
Speaker: But I know the despair that comes when they're not.
Speaker: I know the long nights
Speaker: And the doubt and the fear and the crawling back to a wound that just isn't there, I know intensity's address and the letdown that went there, I'm sorry for it.
Speaker: It takes years off your life and it cannot be avoided.
Speaker: Sometimes these little words are crutches for the crush that we feel.
Speaker: So this poem is a pathetic vehicle for me to tell you, each one of you,
Speaker: That I love you in so many ways, in the same ways that stay up nights and days, dreaming up the perfect way to be there for someone.
Speaker: Meals he would cook for them, poems he would write for them, and the thanks he planned to say when they say no.
Speaker: Well, I love you.
Speaker: And you will never know how in this light of a magician's hand we could have been lovers and grandly in love, could have changed the whole game, written words on the horizon, changed the compromise.
Speaker: But you will know something else instead.
Speaker: Bitter as bitter ever gets, more bitter than a rotten peach pit, more bitter than a child's most terrifying nightmare at night, you will know that I don't reflect what I see in your eyes.
Speaker: You will share some banal recognition,
Speaker: Some cordial understanding, but have I mentioned that I love you for not lying?
Speaker: So many people lying all the time and I hate them.
Speaker: I hate them.
Speaker: So I love you.
Speaker: You will still go home alone and that is very hard to do.
Speaker: For all the humans with love, for those who aren't their lovers, I love you.
Speaker: And so the poem ends because we know that it will, but before it slips away like everything else, I will attempt the only words I can think of that are a fraction as good as a kiss.
Speaker: When you reach out at night and find not someone but the cold gray light of day that wakes you up like a slap, like a curse, like an insult, I love you.
Speaker: You stay at home thinking of those who are long gone or those who are getting kisses from someone that is not you.
Speaker: I love you.
Speaker: For those who want what they probably need and whose bodies are starving not for food.
Speaker: For me and for you and for all the people who never knew or understood what you would do for them.
Speaker: I love you.
Speaker: I love you.
Speaker: I love you.
