Unfit for Bread : "Writings"

Unfit for Bread

I.
Every girl I date I want to marry:

My throat sings songs
my heart writes poems
and my hand bangs drums.

I throw away my underwear
in their honor and name.
I make them into a little Jesus.

Read their books
sing their hymns
write their epistles.

I pray to them.
Share anxieties
confess infidelities.

And I hang on to every
word from their lips.
Like its really good bread.

II.
As a sophomore in high school I threw out
all of my underwear.
It was the first time my second girlfriend made
a move for third base which most people claim
(if you know anything about the bases)
is somewhere between hand jobs and blow jobs.

The white fabric and cooperative elastic
(which used to be a source of comfort and control)
impeded her now and got in her way.
And her way was now my way.
This imposition would not be tolerated
like the Berlin wall (I'd imagine).

I can only make fathoms about the Berlin wall,
because my eyes were not capable of making sense
of shapes and colors.
You were just a mush of color blobs
squeezed from tubes of paint
I was much too young to watch television.

I was too young to know anything.

III.
Here's something no one explains to you:
When you touch a girl its like glue and this glue is sticky and it creates a bond like two pieces of paper glued face to face. One: Blue and the Other: Yellow. This glue is reluctant to pull apart so when the girl you touched and in many instances facilitated and encouraged to touch you decides that New York is too far from Illinois and leaves, the motion of her gesture tears you both apart. And, unlike the arm falling off an ice sculpture, this is not a clean break. It's like ripping apart a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with no fingers. You're left with little bits of yellow on the blue and little bits of blue on the yellow. A bunch of tiny wounds you get to pick at.

IV.
I was never too upset about getting rid of my underwear.
I was embarrassed by the prospect of a girl
seeing their unfortunate stains.
Or how they grayed in my laundry soup
because I was too lazy to separate
my darks and lights.

It was weird and nice how I now
jumbled around as I walked up and down
certain staircases.
I did miss the support though
like you miss the reluctant hug of a young lover
that decided New York was too far.

(Obviously!)
Far enough to devalue and invalidate all of the effort
I put into throwing away my underwear.
This grand gesture of Romance
because I wanted to improve access to Romance.
Or at least what I thought was Romance.

I remember knowing what Romance was when I was fifteen.

V.
Her bread is wonder,
full of holes and injected
with air and bleach.

It's not that Bread you get from the bakery
that warms your fingers through the glove of its paper packaging;
dense and chewy as you slide it out

Gently graze it apart with a knife
and dip it into a married pool
of virgin olive oil and fresh garlic

I am the package and I want to be the
paper cradle that holds this Bread
as it seeps out heat gently and fervent.

But I'm covered in bits of yellow paper
and on top of that, bits of pink paper and bits of green paper
and brown paper and orange paper and red paper and white paper and black paper.

And I feel unfit to hold the Bread.

(12.2009)