Not Good but Good Enough?

i.

I’ve never been very good at this

But I love you

I love you enough to risk clichés and taking your judgment on the chin

I love you enough to call from my lungs that 

I AM DERIVATIVE 

and happy

being that way 

if it means I touch you from where I sit

alone in our ways across tables, skimming pages, splayed on patios, walking gangways, laughing under bridges, brooding by roaring cliffs, smoking by the bins that line the back alley off John Street or seated behind the glass of our digital worlds

I love you and I’ve never been good at it

expressing it, how much I want to make it known 

trying is hard on shaky knees at least trying to

honestly is hard

I wish I could quote you Mark Doty, the way his words brave body 

and unbroken melody into grief for love 

but he’s not in the public domain 

so I’ll settle for the greats I haven't read enough of

like Whitman 

To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,

snippet of the body electric 

so much weighed down with the digression of male and female

but how it ends and ends I tremble and quake 

knowing all holy words can be reached for

not figs upon the branch but type fonts in the dropdown menu 

The voice, articulation, language, whispering, shouting aloud,

Food, drink, pulse, digestion, sweat, sleep, walking, swimming,

Poise on the hips, leaping, reclining, embracing, arm-curving and tightening,

The continual changes of the flex of the mouth, and around the eyes,

The skin, the sunburnt shade, freckles, hair,

The curious sympathy one feels when feeling with the hand the naked meat of the body,

The circling rivers the breath, and breathing it in and out,

The beauty of the waist, and thence of the hips, and thence downward toward the knees,

The thin red jellies within you or within me, the bones and the marrow in the bones,

The exquisite realization of health;

O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul,

I want to give you back the words of poets who have ripped me from myself

who have in the dark slithered their bloodlust words into my heartbeat

even in the books too high brow for me

their commas slice me open

lemon and salt on the wound cognisant all words slip past me

I realized too late I don’t mourn what I’ll never know but what I’ll never glimpse a closed library, 

a forest of idioms and phrases that glitter and depart

gold sifted in the river 

how I imagine eureka on my tongue

No, I’ve strayed again 

from what I wanted to say initially 

maybe Emily P. Johnstone could do better

                     Once, many days ago, we almost held it,

                     The love we so desired;

                     But our shut eyes saw not, and fate dispelled it

                     Before our pulses fired

                     To flame, and errant fortune bade us stand

                     Hand almost touching hand.

                     I sometimes think had we two been discerning,

                     The by-path hid away

                     From others' eyes had then revealed its turning

                       To us, nor led astray

                     Our footsteps, guiding us into love's land

                     That lay so near at hand.

Don’t you know her pain for what’s unsung

or is that a step too far

I won't explain her or try to correct the way her words are hushed over

but I comfort in the fact of their presence

will they be enough when we cross the Styx, or will we always have to explain ourselves 

to the boys who only register us as soft with hips that fit between their forefinger and thumb

who’ll only note us when our voices lull 

and I’m sorry I got distracted again

But I want you to know

I do love you

I love you 

I only wanted to make it clear that I’m a little bitter though more grateful

for the way we sing to each other

on Sunday mornings, coming down the stairs, or explaining how to get to the next whisky bar or telling me of the Thing with Feathers or making any words alive

ii.

She mused at the things she had written. Alone as the day gave way to dark and this city of travellers passed her by. Never sparing a glance save for a glare. How few faces warrant a smile anymore.

She felt time slipping, paying for the privilege of lingering in cafes after noon. 

She waited for the page to stop screaming mocktones, and after 43 minutes of hope and in an effort to inspire, she scoured the internet for ‘public domain poetry’. Met with an onslaught of AI suggestions and English men whose work would never be labelled as “men’s writing”, her body stiffened with exhaustion. 

Better to move and make way for something tactile.

The subway was the only time in her day where her body was on. Met with the impact of other beings, she sensed the outline of herself and her eyes shocked her in the window reflection. 

The crammed conditions and heat, the strangeness of a space requiring touch without eye contact. 

A feeling sat at the bottom of her when she stilled there standing, it tried to will tears – though it never inched forward. She usually tried her best to keep moving, a remote-control car scurrying about the city. Robotic or artificial, had she crossed the river of the dead and never noticed?

She lied; it wasn’t that she hadn’t noticed. With every choice, she made herself alone. Not unloved by any means, but alone. The last time she’d moved towards the living, she wished to pull away - the sensation of life, warmth, strength, as overwhelming as waking in a body you don't recognise. She’d come to terms with being without her body or pretending to be. Middle-class aloofness to the nth degree. 

Walking out of the station, she opened her email. The eleventh time this hour. Finally, something arrived. The words of a girl from a distance. Something opened in her chest. A poem, untitled, laying there in her inbox as smooth and syncopated as an early aughts R&B song. A promised pen pal of poetic endeavours and dreams, it seems she’d forgotten.

The words weaved against her, eyes flickering across the miniature scroll, lips parted, sweet synonyms, similes, synecdoche and strophes on the exhale. Her mind was engulfed in meaning and place and the feeling of being known. 

Then it ended. She raised her eyes back to the fluorescent overhead lighting. The empty water bottle scattered along the floor, used tissues trampled flat, dead grass, shards of glass and tinfoil bits lit her way forward.

The heat died, and a screeching train behind her roared. 

But it's not an unusual story. The rest of the world grazed her coat as she ascended the stairs, tapped her card, and swallowed the call of love, a bile her frail body hadn't mastered yet.

iii.

The above pieces do not convey what it is I wanted to say in the least, but I wanted you to see that I tried all the same. 

What I attempted and what I made are laughable in their distance. Initially I sought a grand statement, spanning conversations I’ve had, poetry I’ve read, words scribbled on bathroom walls, spray-painted tags, and phrases thrown at me in daily advertisements. 

I wanted to try to explain that art is worth our time. It makes us feel, but it cannot take the place of feeling. It’s a recognition of mutual human experience from across the road or sea, a light in the dim morning. 

It’s important however, to remember its limitations. It cannot heal the touch-starved or bandage the systems failing us. It cannot buy us tickets home or cross an ocean. 

Art is, in total, the evidence of effort. 

For a long time, I thought art was about the final product, but it recently dawned on me – far too late – every ‘finished’ piece was simply abandoned to the wilderness of existence. Shakespeare was just trying publicly to put his incomplete narratives onto the stage. Didn’t go too poorly for him either. ‘The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock’ was T. S. Eliot fumbling his way with an idea. Humbling certainly, but it also made me feel more connected to all of it and to you. I realized that whatever I say, you’re witnessing my effort. It is this effort that love amounts to. Simple as. 

It is not perfection, not conditional, just the effort and the trying. Trying to make something for another, accepting its imperfection, and trying anyway. Knowing it can’t accomplish what you hope but making it all the same. A Greek tragedy. 

So that’s what this is, me trying. It’s all I have to give you. I cannot hold you or whisper that I need you here, to stay despite the encroaching dark. We’ll likely never meet, and even less likely be close enough to warrant true intimacy. I wish I could say I could give you money, but my bank account is almost always eerily close to empty. I wish my mind were full of innovation to bestow you with better conditions, but I only have the simple impetus of attempting to distill my thoughts and experiences into something well, nice, for you. 

And in spite of my intentions, sweet as they are, I’ve failed. Irrevocably. Totally and completely. I cannot give you belief or imbue you with purpose. My words are neither persuasive nor uplifting, just words on a page before you. True only in their effort and ineptitude. 

But if you forgive me, forgive the failure, and take these words – do you see your own mercy, your own loveliness? This exchange in art, equally one-sided, is made alive in our mutual acts of surrender.

I accept that whatever I say will never cross the barrier of your soul; it will never rise above the body and shake you into action. You forgive my failure and find something worthy anyway. 

Acts of humility. Graceful towards our fragility. We encounter ourselves. Babes in the arms of strangers, what we mean and what we are capable of, two fraternal twins. The thing tying us together, our inability, what a beautiful symmetry. 

I wanted to say I love you. Forgive me for what I was trying to say. If you can. 

Maybe from it you can find something to keep the light on for. 

If not for me, for you at least. 

Keep swimming against the tide. Our arms may be weary, but when I turn my cheek and see your eyes above the tide, you are ever my lighthouse.