For L.K.
In another world we both grow up
kiddie-corner each other, dynamic duo
of queer-ass weirdo halflings
writing out our history together,
downstream of Hobbiton Water or
in the glens of Southfarthing
because forget those Baggins chumps
when the whole damn Shire only wish
they had our kinds of misadventures;
we climb the cherry trees outside my room
in the converted garage where the piano sits
because their big and ancient branches show
a portal at the end, not to some rubbish
Narnia, or cave to trick the wolf and fox
but somewhere folks like us are free
to carve our music from the wood. (I
still can’t figure why you choose
that piercing mandrake transverse thing but then
you’ve always liked to scream and I
suppose I like to charm the snakes, and
anyway, we’re still in key of C
together, as we should.)
Forced into the human kennels they call “class,”
and learning just how magic dies beneath
the busy feet of tired adults, endure:
our school would probably suck because —
well, don’t they all? Even in another time
and place and circumstance, one rarely nears
the end of stupid, or of evil
nestled cozy in such institutions.
All the goombahs in our way think we are
dating, since that’s all there ever is
between a boy and girl (whatever those
words mean). Their roving eyes and empty brains
control too busy fingers, idle tongues,
when certainly I wind up scrapping while
you calmly smash those fuckers in the face
however magically.
As we, somehow, survive the typhoons known
as public university, we learn
to stay inseparable. You travel far
away and I still farther, both our seas
quite different. Yet you are always here.
I read your messages in bottles
as they arrive each week just like
a shipwrecked castaway, nostalgic
for any tales of distant lands
including home; each one is
an incantation bearing me to you:
this world could never syncopate
our bond, despite all jealousy. (They wish.)
Your breath, my heartbeat; hand in hand
and sound in sound: we never, ever, lose.
But just as dreams are generous,
reality is spare. And given all
dimensions, time and space, and
supersymmetry, we have wound up here:
years and worlds and dreams apart, and now —
a further parting.
The one thing shared by both these worlds of lost
impossibility is you and I
detest farewells as surely as we hate to leave;
it’s all that we can do to mumble “Hey,
I’ll see you soon, okay?” and sneak away
before it gets all awkward. Here, in this
reality (they say), the only place
or time that we confess such things is
on a stage, our paper flutes and parchment
scribbles serve us fulu pai to seal
the irresponsible emotion tight.
But
tonight, my friend, we have the stage:
the fires here are bright enough at once
to scorch those sigils white, and melt
the seal upon that magic scroll of this
so dull cartography, and like a good
gray elf, I’m bored. So take my stand: Let’s blaze
across this middlin’ earth a swath of gold
and cleave the rift in darkened skies so great
that flares from neighbor galaxies
will be as jewels bedazzling
our kick-ass red Chuck Taylors and
the pommels of our legendary swords.
