My wife gave me the greatest gift of all this morning: she let me sleep in. I was supposed to walk her to work because there aren’t any buses running at 4:30 in the morning, but as I collapsed last night around 6 o’clock with a brutal stabbing pain throughout my head, Flor decided that I probably needed to get all the rest I could, and called a taxi instead of trying to wake me up. Well, I guess she made a tiny effort to rouse me, whispering in general vicinity like a UPS delivery person with a package I’m expecting, but only so that she could say she tried to wake me up. It’s times like this that I know I really won the spousal lottery, and all I got her was some handmade jewelry from a vendor outside the Powell Street BART station. To be fair, she really likes her earrings, and we’re supporting small businesses with our hard-earned dollars.

I’ve been writing a lot about my wife these past few days, so please bear with me as I write about her just this once more before I start in tomorrow on the things which make me grumpy and my other regularly-scheduled ramblings. I know many of you are married, or in a loving (one hopes) relationship of one kind or another, so you may feel honor-bound to raise your voice when I say that my wife is just the best significant other ever. It’s okay. I don’t blame you. If someone I was reading claimed that their relationship was somehow better than my own (especially if my wife was reading it as well), I would call them any number of unflattering exaggerations just so that my wife could comfortably remain the queen of my own world. Not that that is what is going on with this, mind you. Despite the many links which I have sent her, and adding in a translation functionality, she never reads my blog.

She grew in place where reading was a luxury- something that only the rich people had time to waste upon. Combine that with her eyesight, and it’s easy to explain her friend-zoning of the written word. So I’ve decided to write her a love poem (which I can totally get away with because she won’t be reading this) to tell her just how much she means to me. If you’re daring, and have an understanding better half, feel free to read this to them (and say that it’s from you).

Quantifying Butterflies

I love you like the smoke

which follows beauty

round the bonfire which

burns in the summer evenings

I cherish you like

the final sip of Mountain Dew

that swirls around the bottom of

the nearly empty bottle

I need you like a animal

with cries out for freedom in

the night

And I cannot imagine

life without you

because true nothingness

is incomprehensible.

There, I got my chuckle for the day, and hopefully made all of you feel better about your own romantic gestures. Actually, that poem is fairly representative of my displays of love: It starts out sweet, but a little off-putting, gets fairly strange very shortly thereafter, seems almost a little insulting, and then gets all nerdy romantic. I don’t suppose I have to try real hard to figure out why I’ve been dumped more than once on my own birthday. I guess this kind of love takes a certain kind of woman to appreciate. I frequently go on at some length about the type of luck I’ve had in dealing with the ladies, but I have to come clean: I hit the jackpot when my wife agreed to date me, and for some (inscrutable) reason, she has never run away. In the spirit of true love, and to show that I am not a completely bitter old curmudgeon, I’m going to share with you a poem which I wrote for a friend of mine when she was getting married (one of the benefits of being a writer is that wedding gifts are fairly inexpensive, and yet treasured more than His and Her electric razors.

Crucible Of Love

Sing a sigh of sweet surrender

as you fall into his arms,

held by love and understanding

kept safe from doubt and harm.

 

Treasure daily the simple things

and love her more and more each day,

run wild through fields of butterflies

and leave the chance of happenstance

to take you where it may.

 

Two become one in the

crucible of love as

the daily trials will burn away

all that is impure.

 

And what remains is

love itself:

eternal, passionate, mundane.

 

This is the love

we dream about:

 

                Not fireworks,

                but fireplaces.

                Not grand displays,

                but consideration.

                Not co-dependence,

                but appreciation.

 

                This is the love

                that takes a lifetime

                to enjoy.

 

If you are looking to actually impress someone with romantic wordery, you may want to choose this last one, as it’s less an attempt to show off the twisted humor of Tex Batmart, and more a genuine outpouring of affection. For nearly a decade after the Great Purge of ’00, I was stuck in a sort of poetic hell, where the only way that I could get anything written was to break it up in bite-sized stanzas and make it look all fancy. I think that poetry appealed slightly more to me because there was less of an entire tale and more of a single emotion blown up so large that the beating of my heart could be seen from outer space. Well, that and Dead Poets Society, where I first discovered that language was developed for one endeavor: to woo women.

I was just scanning through my poetry to try and find the perfect piece to play us out tonight, and as it turns out, I don’t have a whole lot of happy love poetry. Some day there may be a market for angry protestations of romance, but today is not that day (maybe tomorrow). Anyway, I hope you enjoy this final poem, and have a wonderful Valentine’s Day:

Do Not Write Between The Lines

Meet my eyes for coffee

in the java-joint within your heart

and sit awhile over steaming

double grande mochas and

perhaps we’ll order belgian waffles.

 

Whipped cream, strawberries, and

a side of bacon – these are things

I love. Well, and maybe moonlight,

but I’m pretty sure that

that’s a given.

 

-Tex

(All poetry courtesy of Tex Batmart)