happy piece

um, call. matt caplin


PLATITUDES

we repeatedly listen to songs because we are not done extracting the air from them.

because babies dance i have faith the world will be ok.

dear dead grandfather, how close we are at last.

has happiness changed meaning over the years? when did it go from being the sun on my legs to being someone else's (merely) idea?

today, between the sun and the cement, there were two legs. mine. (happiness is made from such small bricks)

it's a miracle we found each other. remember that.

there's this necklace: an icecream scoop shape made of little diamonds, pink and white. because i knew it was yours, i liked it near me. it's hard to explain.

if we have failed, it is only at winning. but this is not a win or lose game. it's not even a game.

my body grows old absorbing memories. one day i will have more memories than body.

silence is full of stories.


MANIA

when i feel like this it is hard to communicate , if only i could fit an orgasm into a balloon , and you breathe it in. then you'd know. how time is irrelevant. how if you are still you can feel it , i am either dizzy or i can sense the earth turning , the water in my brain considers itself one with the celestial tide. love is not a feeling , not a sensation .. it is a knowledge. fact. it is nice when things exist without qualification. it seems i will never tire of touching women's feet , eating green apples , wrestling with children. if i could sing i would do it all the time. i would find the melodies you hid behind your ear- where it is perfect to kiss , i would repeat the things the daisy told me , after i make my wish, and blow the eyelash away, it leaves a fossil in the air - one note, held. poetry is always a language for madmen.


DELIRIUM

the novel grows in my head. story after story. Dr. Li and Selina, whom he loved but could not confess to. Orestes decides to take a job at the Collinswood cemetery where he can sweep leaves and look for the oldest gravestones. all those people on trains, i'm sure they have names. the homeless man who lived under the bridge, for whom i would steal muffins from Starbucks and hand to him on my walk home, who would call me the muffin man the muffin man. my sister, her name is Sahar, who has only one foot in this world, and the other is somewhere else. if only when we slept, we could all close our eyes, and whisper into one another's ears all the things that we had discovered , so that when we woke in the morning i could cook and you could distinguish Bach from Handel and someone entirely else would know contentment. that's one we'd all pass around. a strange panacea , a heroin for the soul. perhaps when i shake my prayer book a powder will spill into my lap. and while we sleep we will dream of our first kisses. of sitting on trains, going from Hamburg to Prague, recently recovered from a fever, obsessed with the colour white. dreaming of babies' little fingers , endless bookshelves , autobiographies that end with the word _r e d e m p t i o n_, of the first time you read Neruda , heard Bookends by Simon & Garfunkel. when you walk through the door i'm going to kiss you soo softly you'll think i'm a ghost. and we'll dance in the hallway and you'll think i'm crazy. and i'll kiss your chest and bite your clavicles. smell your hair. and while we sleep every night every soundless paw of it will slide around us like satin or time or silence and absorb us and for once: we will feel included. and when we wake, we'd brush our teeth and change out of our pajamas and when i put my key in the ignition of my car i will hear repeated - and when i open the mailbox and when i stir my coffee and when someone says hello what i'll really be hearing repeated - and when i fall asleep in my chair in the afternoon and when i pee at the urinal and when i underline words on paper, also when i shake hands and when i unlace shoes and hidden underneath Shostakovich's 5th and the Kink's Greatest Hits, repeated over and over i'll hear...

the sound of our happiness. which is a small thing. made of smaller things. sunshine and vanilla syrup and -can i have your number? -sure!s. not yours, or mine: ours. and all it means is that when we wait at the traffic light, we won't mind too much.


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pardon the uncharacteristic effusiveness tonight. hope everyone's doing well out there. (holla atchya boi!)