Modern Shorthand

In timely fashion we rebuild, rewrite, rewind.

The blank expressions of passionate idiots reflect the inner turmoil of unexpected happiness.

The unyielding questions quietly asking:  "Could this last?"

Is this what it is to be lucky?  What else could this be?  And have questions ever been more irrelevant?

Affection is a statement, refuted only by niggling doubts in the hearts of lovers.

I end my sentences now with periods; text messages transforming shorthand into the language of love and longing requited.

Don’t fear uncertainty–surely these unresolved events represent the achievability of our greatest hopes.

This hermitage now rests uninhabited, an exhibit of only modest interest toured occasionally by self-pitying souls.

I sing the praises of an ideal harnessed and put to work in the faltering heart of a hardened resolve,

Firmly believing that a person functions better for the sake of a better person.

Old lyrics spring to mind, finally removed from an unreached understanding.

So let’s walk home, let’s be afraid, I wanna grab you by the arms and kiss you so hard…

Does he lay awake listening to your breath, worried you smoke too many cigarettes…

She said she’d never seen someone so lost I said I’ve never felt so found…

…and then I kissed her on the cheek, and so she kissed me on the mouth…

You did this.  Don’t deny it. 

Don’t even try and describe it.

We part with broken half-hearts

Aware salvation awaits in a drumlin merge.

A venture based on words, truly,

And all these thoughts duly

Misspoken by a mouth in rebellion.

Even now a seditious tongue splits in two,

A serpent’s fork like lightning dividing the sky

That separates two distant sites

Like wrong from right.  Right?

I breathe breaths to keep from dying,

Trying to stay alive for fear of flying

Somewhere else.  We both meet the same night,

At different times, latitude, and longitude.

But it reflects the same mood

Of mystery.  Save a kiss for me,

And surely I’ll keep a few for you.

Ooohh la la.  Ohhhh ha ha.  Up and down stairs these lost men race, passing each other but never noticing the familiar faces.  With steady steps they betray their complacency, sure that to have a destination is to have a goal is to have purpose is to have meaning, unaware that none of these things equal any of the other.  The building sways dangerously in the wind, a lone cattail twitching potentously in the field of reeds.  Where are we going, one man asks, only to be answered by a sudden heart attack and welling darkness.  With effort and will windows open to the outside, a dimension defined by a deafening lack of light.  The prism’s melody melds with me, a resounding revelation of spectral significance.  Follow me?  Follow me and get lost, my friend, and we might meet each other and name ourselves brothers.  See this?  See this and deafen yourself, the sky raining down until we stand on existence.  I hadn’t thought to breathe until I found it a burden, and even now it seems strangely difficult, almost as if the unconscious cue from my brain had been a fatuous boon of a confused automaton.  I found meaning in leaning on a reed, strongly reminiscent of brat pack movies and a John Hughes high school.  Oh, wow, had I written all of these words of longing belonging in a singing bird so tired of wronging himself in preparation for now.  Perhaps I should be straightforward, then, and shed the shackles of ambiguity.

I am not an experienced man.  I am worldly in a bookish way.  But through some magic of empathy, through the surefire recognition of a kindred soul, I have replaced disinterest with an unquenchable curiosity.  Speed is relative with the world racing by us; surely, by those standards, we move to quickly.  And I would contend that we have no time to waste, for that would simply cheat ourselves.  I know you well; I want to know you better.  I want to kiss you on the forehead and hum off-key to some old beat up jazz 45, quietly asking myself what luck I’vefound and question what I’ve done to deserve it.  Has one person, in all the lives that have transpired on our simmering planet, ever toppled such carefully constructed apathy so quickly before?  Has one person ever answered so many desperate questions so assuredly before?  I’ve no wish to beat around the bush, and I’ve no wish to be too forward.  But I am this.  I am a 21 year old man in Wisconsin, tired of wondering that perhaps there’s no one out there deeply infatuated with kindness.  With the belief of living for the moment.  With taking what pleasure we can from the company we keep, and I know that I want to keep yours.  I want to spend time with you.  So, I guess:

Can I have a moment of your time?  And if that moment works out, perhaps a few more?  And after that…who knows?  ‘Cause things are working out and feeling good, and there’s not many things better than that.