I wanted to give you something
something simple yet beautiful
respectable yet rippling
resplendent yet
reachable
within my means and meaning
——————————————————-
I wanted to give you your own city
but they’re expensive, Mon
and only rotted cities beginning with C
like Cleveland, Calcutta, and Camden
are being sold currently
so we’ll pass on that videoed dream
——————————————————-
I wanted to get us all a house
somewhere in the winds of San Fernando
where people read about crime on the subways,
off the subways,
grime in the air, the corruption of the daily water
rather than being too near the traces of evil
the two sweet scent of-
but I keep playing the number
but I still haven’t hit the lottery
———————————————————————
I desperately wished
to afford you
satin dresses and lace-fringed chapeau
shiny shoes and the coat of the minx
of the fox
or the sable
or even the unicorn
but my ship, it surely appears,
is still floating, floating,
in the most sargasso of seas
the most perfect of triangles
blissfully becalmed Bermuda
never to deport
———————————————————
I can give you fruit of the mind
which surely others could
I can nurture your egolet
till it grows to fullity
but that requires nothing
that is my key alone
I can bring you tea and pretzels
and be there when you want
how you want
but most men would
———————————————————
So I wanted to give you a Poem
that would outlive the memories of our time
outshine the factory streets
outshout the screams of various importants
full of your beauty and your easy grace
your champagne laugh and pirate eyes
your champagne laugh and pirate eyes
like a painting only truer
but you’ve left me wordless
drained of colours and replies
of the nighttime and the day
till I can only give you
what I have wrote above
a flawed receipt of love
3/20/82
changes;
deleted line and give you some rest after pretzels line
Joan never need to rest
double champagne laugh and pirate eyes
even though Joan had a beer laugh
Other than that
as is as was
robertthesmall 