Love Poem
My grandmother is in a casket.
we can’t stop lashing out,
I’m sad n shit.
l-o-v-e
lost
— how you really feel?”
resentful
for a second
embarrassed
damn
You are comfortable in discomfort
sometimes
I exist
Your hairs
the ones not tied back fly forward
hands extend for the body you thought you had lost
how transient being is.
And when my body dies, it may become a number of things like
free.
I don’t want —
I can’t write a love poem.
if I can find comfort closest to colonial convention
then maybe
my soul could be saved from Hell built by conquest
neither an abomination
nor the weak rib
perhaps
proving to myself my
possibility to exist.
Do you really want a love poem?
I mean the earth
is on fire and
melting ice sheets are rising over the city
will we ever be able to breathe
if the atmosphere continues to choke us out into the cracks in the dirt of the pavement
deaf to our pleas of ‘I can’t breathe’
So basically, I no longer fall in love,
cuz
it may be catastrophically devastating;
The city is burning while drowning and I love contradictions more than Whitman.
how cliche: a queer love story
are you kidding me?
I’m already a part of Gen Z, meaning we’re weird meaning
we use memes to communicate
death is a punchline
oversharing is not an issue
I guess it’s like a part of evolution or something?
subtweets, ghosting, Instagram stories of everything,
anything other than face-to-face contact confrontation
And love??
You really gotta be kidding me
It seems foolish to discuss love w/o talking abt racism which seems foolish to discuss w/o talking abt white supremacy which seems foolish to discuss w/o talking abt insecurity-
We’re #woke like that.
some of us at least
are critical of a word thrown out like that
Woke — love — poetry
More specifically,
I can’t write a love poem because I am not angry.
I’m turning over to see my greatest nightmare stare right back at me
empty n
off white n
nothing n
glaring
waiting
for truth or somethin of the sort
the air surrounding our bodies is thick
like through pauses
silences
breathing
eye movements
birds moving in packs making space for the little ones to survive
I digress-
I learn growth through the intensity of the the sun
how it cannot be stared at for too long
as if it is purity
and maybe it is
maybe it isn’t
but, who cares? we all are and aren’t always
you are and aren’t always
anyways
We are 20, we are kids barely why do we believe love can only exist for one person one way at a time
Have we lost all imagination
what is forever if not just the present moment
You say: ‘Break my heart, that takes courage.”
I say: I love you.
But, this is not a love poem all
cliché n shit
all
normal n shit
all
boring n shit
all
Not my style n shit but shit — -
We are the U-Haul I vowed my closeted teen self to never become
I find my full body must catch my tongue before I let the truth roll out with no filter,
I love the way you roll our spliffs
and no
this is still not a love poem
but I can use the word ‘love’ all I want
Cuz
I said so.
This is my poem a
testimony of love beyond force
I do not have the courage to break a thing, a being, a person,
I am not as radical as you may think
my pen is the closest I’ve been to revolution
(Except for the time with the brigade of pigs in Harlem that night)
i
am
stuck
on
the Break
trying
to make pleasing art of the syllables of
the sentences
in the pages over
I got lost
stopped
to pick you up
take you with me
nowhere
moving
on and
on and
on
until there is
was
Something
no guarantees
I may be scared without you
And is that not love too?
Call it stubbornness wants
following my own fate or simply
using the erotic as power within my life
I can no longer try to find the words
to put into form
And perhaps this is something like a love poem.
*Inspired by Tommy Pico’s Nature Poem
*Full video on my Instagram: @natamazan
© 2020, Nat E. Amazan all rights reserved.
Poetry & Prose: Nathalie Amazan
