I Smell Spring

I know when the first moments of spring hit our campus. It is when I wake up early in the morning because there is a certain smell creeping in under the window that doesn’t close all the way. It is because when I wake the birds are making sounds that they only make at that time of year. They are happy birds.
And I definitely know when spring hits our campus because all of a sudden, in the course of one day, the quad is lined and littered with people. Blankets are spread out, balls are kicked around, Frisbees make war paths across the paths of pedestrians, and as the days grow on towards May, less and less clothing is worn.
Crossing the quad during that time becomes a social obligation. It is like navigating a busy party where clusters of your friends are around every corner. People are more aware of what they are wearing as they go to class, since now the animals are not the only spectators of the outdoors.
I am not complaining, though. I love those days just as much as the next eager mville student. When all the trees are budding around the parameter of the walkways, people smile more. That’s just a fact. I guess, really, spring on our campus helps us remember why we liked it in the first place.

Boston v. New York

The thing about Boston is, it’s all very intimate. I know what you’re thinking: how can a huge, bustling, always constructing and building city be intimate? Just look at all the one way streets which have you so tangled that by the time you find out where you actually are you’ve lost yourself somewhere along the way. How can that be intimate? Well it is.

I was there the other day and I couldn’t quite figure out what it was. I was standing on the subway, then I was standing waiting for the bus, then I was sitting on the bus, and the whole time I was uneasy. The snow was falling and the light was dim and there were people around. That is not unlike New York. The standing and the busses and the subways and the sitting are not unlike New York. My mood was not unlike New York. Being in an unfamiliar place was not unlike New York.
Then I noticed it. Everywhere people were watching, looking, noticing, glancing, talking TO me, not around me.
That is not New York.
Mostly no one notices in New York. You can go days surrounded by nine million people and never be noticed. You don’t ever quite catch someone’s eye. You might be sitting, standing, walking, running, subway, bus, apartment, but no one is quite looking your way. Sometimes you think you’ve gotten half an eye, but you’re the one who looks away first.
In Boston my hand slipped on the subway between Park Street and Harvard Square, and the girl next to me turned, checked my hand position, and asked me if I was all right.
I told her I was fine, then spent the next three stops trying to figure out why and what she had meant. In New York touch means you shift your position to look through their position a little differently so that you don’t touch anymore.
In Boston you touch. You look. You are noticed. You make full eye contact.
This makes me uneasy. This is intimacy that I’m not sure I care to take advantage of. It is not unpleasant and threatening. It is just there.
In fake New York people live alone.
In Boston they are intimate.
At least they were that one time.

Poetry Time

Okay, so, I haven't written poety in years, and then a few friends coherced me into trying my hand again. The basis for the following piece is a conversation between myself and my friend Max. He told me a story about an ex of his who started as a fuck buddy and then became a girlfriend. Not long after the official title had been added, however, they found that what they had built their relationship on (aka really great sex) was nothing more than a sand foundation that was slowly crumbling. Things didn't work out, and Max asked the question "what is left when really great sex isn't enough, or when that physicality is what you've built everything on?" I was assigned the task of writing out those feelings, so this is what you get.

After Sex

I think,
I do not know for sure,
but I think it possible
that stark and sterile are the
new thing.

Before, we grabbed the hem of the sky,
Purple-blue and pink horizons touched together,
we touched, flashing neon arrows in our minds
splashed bright spots to our backdrop,
I dropped, and gasped, and smiled, and lived.

Over and again,
cliff jumping, sky-diving,
belay me up beside you,
virtual rungs of sexual existence going up and up and up,
but then…what happens when we belay to the top?

The surroundings are an open eye, up there,
staring us down in unblinking determination,
stripping away our understanding
of the mural world around us,
a panoramic view that we no longer know.

An elephant is there with us
named namely for its size
its prowess of grey skin
shaped around the insecurities
of our seemingly emotional lack.

I never imagined that
once you’ve fucked your way to the top,
the elephant will be there to join you,
intent on staying until you find a different circus
for its existence.

Sex, it consumed us,
point and check for the rewards
that had illuminated our meaning,
a hallelujah chorus striking symbols
that have now turned to muted silence.

The elephant has replaced
that purple-blue haze,
neon signs glow dimly with sparks spitting
out the remnants of what we’d built
our relationship on.

Stark is the contrast
between now and then,
Sterile is the taste, and the smell,
and the emotion, the six senses shutting out
the used-to-bes and the what ifs of “us.”

If we stare that elephant down
will it disappear?
Or will we?
Will it end?
Will we will it to end?

A circus comes through and we must decide,
We bring the elephant and join!
No…we leave the elephant and join!
No…I’ll go and you’ll stay with him,
Perhaps we’ll have weekend visits.

…perhaps not.