You may think I'm not checking you out—
that how could possibly this tired old man
be checking out your beautiful slim body,
while you sit there, pretending to read something.
Or when you bump against me on the sidewalk—
so rude, so sweet, looking the other way.
Or when you pretend you're not seeing me
from the other end of the grocery isle.
Or when I catch a glimpse of your voluptuous
smile and the eternal waves that emanate
from the daring folds of your consciousness.
I
am looking at you, and in my mind,
the subway tunnel shows the picture already—
our picture—the one where I see ourselves
old and sweet, holding hands, recapping
a long life of joys and kids and sadness—
and joy again, the whole frigging samsara
of our love and lust and fights and detachment,
to bring us in the end inside this wagon
so bright one might think we're lost in the Matrix—
a matrix of our own making, no spoons, not even
a knife to cut through the bullshit of the years.
Cause all that matters really is that initial
burst of beauty that connects us with the stars,
with the creation, with the sad beautiful circle
of life—a life well lived, and, seen from here,
from this defaced subway window, so quaint
and instagrammy, but still real and ours.
This life that will never materialize,
a quantum world of love where all my lovers,
all of you, are as part of me as anything else.
Why deny it. I guess they say we're one.
They must mean this, this striving and urge
to branch out and live entire lives encapsulated
within other lives, video games, avatars
to be enjoyed and composted in the great
dark pile of our genetic inheritance.
Away we go then, into the graffitied tunnel
that will just take us to a new station
where we can bump against each other again,
and you pretend you don't see me, your eyes
the very same I see every time this magnificent
cosmos lets us be together one more time.
