l'a(r)mour

I intend to post later today, but I envision that I have a ridiculously busy day ahead of me. We've all got midterms looming on the horizon and I am but one of the many in this crowd, so I'm having to rely on some quick mental work to find material to throw up on my palette.

In case I don't post later, I'd like to leave you with some poetry that I found particularly unsettling and at the same time extremely fitting. In high school, we have these diluted concepts of love, especially because we see our male counterparts as the suave James Bond, the daring Indiana Jones, the solid General Maximum Decimus Merridius; a league of idealized Malboro Men in their swaggering ways. While the role of the male in society should be an idealized one (we will speak of traditional roles and my sociological education another day), we often forget that love comes in so many forms other than the "sweep you off your feet, carry you off into the sunset" type. I hadn't met Mag when I first read this poem, so I couldn't really understand what this kind of love meant at the time, but it helped start me thinking outside the orthodox approach to what is beautiful. This was my first approach to understanding how I can still be in love when I accidentally come across her shaving her legs in the bathroom, or when she's fallen asleep at some odd angle and is drooling on her pillow, or how she thinks she looks gross when she's in scrubs after work when I think she looks the most attractive at that moment.

So, I give you John Frederick Nims - Love Poem:

My clumsiest dear, whose hands shipwreck vases,
At whose quick touch all glasses chip and ring,
Whose palms are bulls in china, burs in linen,
And have no cunning with any soft thing.

Except all ill-at-ease fidgeting people:
The refugee uncertain at the door
You make at home; deftly you steady
The drunk clambering on his undulant floor.

Unpredictable dear, the taxi drivers' terror,
Shrinking from far headlights pale as a dime
Yet leaping before red apoplectic streetcars --
Misfit in any space. And never on time.

A wrench in clocks and the solar system. Only
With words and people and love you move at ease.
In traffic of wit expertly manoeuvre
And keep us, all devotion, at your knees.

Forgetting your coffee spreading on our flannel,
Your lipstick grinning on our coat,
So gayly in love's unbreakable heaven
Our souls on glory of spilt bourbon float.

Be with me, darling, early and late. Smash glasses --
I will study wry music for your sake.
For should your hands drop white and empty
All the toys of the world would break.

(Be with me, darling, early and late. Yes, and so it shall be.)