Thursday, June 4, 2009

you're all i need; please believe me

all i can say about this poem is yes, yes, YES.




"Before Everything is Over" by George Wallace

before everything is over i would like to make love to you
the same number of times as a gentleman knocking on a
door that will never open for him.

the same number of times a mirror fails to reflect the spirit
of a ruined man. the same number of times a young woman
discovers in the middle of a noisy party

that she is alone. i would like to make love to you like a man
leaning his face from the window of a passenger train to catch
one more look at the one woman he ever

truly adored, but now he must leave behind. like a circus
performer looking up at a ceiling of trapeze rings, crazy
lights and precarious high wires,

knowing he will never climb that high. like a washed up prize
fighter reaching for the canvas because it is his only friend.
like a bum reaching for a twenty dollar bill

that is blowing across a busy boulevard. o i would like to make love to
you before the passersby pass by before
the falling sun falls out of this world

and into the next, before the brown bear of winter falls
into his magnificent winter slumber. i would like to make
love to you with my forehead

pressed to your naked waist. with my platelets pulsing in
your veins. with my brain on fire and snow falling on your
hissing flames o i would like to make

love to you a hundred times with the shuddering knowledge
of you, with your frozen smile and untraceable fingertips.
you with your indecipherable dreams.

because i am doomed to live with you even when i am
without you -- you with your incomplete shoulders. you
with your rainbow colored lips.

you with your empty hands. your perfumed silence, your
perfect elegance. you, with the sunlight that leaks out of
your darkness and into my world.

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