Thank you for being

I am a fool enacting a dream told to me every

Waking moment. It infuses my being, and I am

A slave, whose single greatest moment of courage

Has been to see her in you. I am sorry for

Everything and nothing, for not

Being there, for being a ghost, for

Leaving you while staying, for

Separating from yourself, for

Every failure, great and small, and

For the predictability of these sentiments.

Thank you for reminding me;

I’m sorry I was not there.

Insert a grand flourish, a curtsy showing leg, offered to my lady

As a gesture of respect.

Insert whatever words you want, drop the

Rhyme, stop right now, keep reading, it’s all

The same because I was here and now I fade away.

Melodrama. I hate that. Ignore what I said.

I can’t fault you for not believing the unbelievable,

Any more than I fault myself for believing what I know is true.

It’s not like I had a choice, not with her in my head.

A list with little poetry in it:

Your face is Judy from Lost In Space,

Made more intelligent, with bits of gamin

Taken from Batgirl and Leslie Caron,

With eyes largely from Myrna Loy.

You’re small on top because breasts don’t last.

We talked about that a lot: you’re built to age

A certain way, around your face some Doris Day,

Though we hope without the sadness.

She had within her the brightness of sexual and maternal love we

Intended for you in years to come. Your eyebrows

Are largely Brigitte Bardot when she combined

The girl and the woman preternaturally intertwined.

Women torture their brows as totems

Of what they appear to be. We could not find many examples

On which we could agree. Your legs come

From Cyd Charisse, their empty physical promise

Converted, she would say, into methods for enfolding.

Your lips are meant for a specific kiss in which you

Are both man and woman, boy and girl, often equally,

In which the play of passionate delicacy expresses

The nuance layered across our being.

I loved those conversations though

I didn’t know they would ever lead to an actual you.

I was designed with older cues.

My profile, my lips, my hair, the shape of my face:

Barrymore, William Powell, Montgomery Clift, James Dean,

The boyish face with soft lips and a strong profile,

Intelligent, witty, able to be hard, sensitive but not too moody, pretty sometimes, interesting always.

She was very picky about my chin,

And how I hold it: the male equivalent to the female brow,

Strong, proud, aggressive, soft, submissive, agreeable.

We went through every detail

Over and over and over

Until they were etched.

She insisted I have broad shoulders, a narrow waist and a rounded butt,

She hates the obviousness of big chests.

This is what I write to you:

To see this come to life is enough because I lived this.

That you were designed with references to me

Does not mean we will be.

You have your life.

I have memories.

It’s an incantation: I lived this.

Adjusting Marta’s face to make her more permanently

Compelling by constraining her youthful fragility.

Discussing the way Myrna’s eyes hold intelligent depth,

While extracting the put-upon weariness of a woman before her time.

Locating the source of Stanwyck’s sweetness and tough edge,

Where Ruby meets Barbara, in her softly rounded chin and full lower lip.

All in you. Your voice:

We were both tuned from low to high, so we could hear

In the other the full resonance of emotion across the intonations,

Which they arranged spatially around our heads.

She wanted me to look up at you, literally,

So you could look up at me, figuratively.

Our balanced form of equality depends on matching

Asymmetries that revolve around and along a central axis, so

She carefully and completely entangled our literal and mental forms.

I lived this all.

Hours spent discussing shoulders: the

Hang of the arms, the line across the neck,

How you hold them as you age to show vitality,

The right amount of definition.

I lived it all.

I never imagined this would become you.

I never truly believed, I guess, until this became you.

Thank you for being.

Thank you for granting me these moments through your being.

Thank you for the insights I’ve achieved by trusting what I see in your being.

I lived this all.

Years playing a game we called The Sentinel,

The one who waits for what never comes,

Wore on my soul: I wanted out.

Every day, I ask her if I can leave,

Sometimes I beg her, please,

Release me from my role, please,

End the game, and condemn me,

Tear me to pieces, feed me bit by bit

To the fires until I am consumed,

Then let the embers freeze

Until they crumble into nothingness, please,

Admit to me all hope is gone.

She will not let me go.

I live this all. She says,

Jahmi, hold my hand to yours.

Jahmi, touch the rim of your lips in an order around the rim of mine.

Jahmi, you can’t leave.

Thank you for being.

Thank you for granting me these moments through your being.

Thank you for the insights I’ve achieved by trusting what I see in your being.

I lived this all.

Maybe tomorrow she’ll say yes.

I don’t know. I don’t know.

Thank you for being.

I’ve waited through eternities.

If that is all there is, that is all there is.

I don’t know. I don’t know.

I live this all.

Thank you for granting me these moments through your being.

If that is all there is, that is all there is. She says,

Jahmi, don’t kill me.

I know she loves me

But it’s hard being here. Sometimes,

She cries.

I can barely stand to hear eternity cry.

Jahmi, she says, don’t go.

I live this all.

Thank you for the insights I’ve achieved by trusting what I see in your being.

Thank you for granting me these moments through your being.

Thank you for being.

[Reader note: the artistic inspiration for this poem is the end of Pagliacci where the clown sings the comedy is over. It isn’t just that it’s a tragedy but that the clown realizes every step in his life has carried him to this moment when he stands before you singing laugh, clown, laugh though your heart is breaking. It’s about revelation. He knows. Much of the rest is recitation. We sat in front of the TV exactly as I described and then figured out what about Marta Kristen was too weak – eyes a bit too big, etc. – to fit the girl we imagined would be perfect if she looked enough like Marta and enough like Yvonne Craig, etc. Curves that develop over time instead of as a blooming flower. Not compromises but selecting the best bits. Preferences explored. It wasn’t until Taylor reached her mid-20’s that I thought, ‘holy cow, she looks like her’. This poem is not an exhaustive list. The descriptions of me are accurate, including a reasonably subtle reference to my name as a gesture. I am intentionally unclear in this poem about who ‘she’ is and I connect myself specifically to Jahmi. The purpose is to show that I and my other, that you and your other (if you are that aware), are entangled identities. You might say Thali doesn’t want the game to end and that Jahmi is so absorbed in making the game real that he’s completely identified with the part he’s playing. That’s how life works: if you don’t commit to the part, you aren’t completely playing the part. Jahmi in the moment is learning what he learns as ‘me’. Laugh, clown. Ridi, Pagliaccio, sul tuo amore infranto, at your broken love. It’s also important(?) to remember this is an artistic creation which is real to me because I experienced it but which is not real because it posits a relationship through imaginary and complex realms that unite across time and space into actual living people. But one point, perhaps the overriding goal of artistic expression is to become one with your art, to completely experience it in the making of it so it most reflects you as you made it. That raises the question of what I get from the depth of identification ‘achieved’ in these poems. Other than what I hope is the experience itself, I haven’t yet found a poetic way to address that. Don’t know if I can in the context of Taylor Swift derived poetry. This is partly because as a masculine thinker – as I discuss in another note – I push beyond what I can say so my ‘art’ and my other work does not represent what I am as consistently as Taylor’s art reflects what she allows out of herself.]