the game.

so, i thought of all these	       brilliant things to say

to you . . . you know.	       the stuff that 

story books and movies are made of.       	passionate,

well-placed adjectives and	       noun phrases---

flowery 	       yet hard-edged . . . pungent. 

quivering, 

hovering 	       smoky words in cyclonic swirls:

thought bubbles.

languid and dangling.

but precise like a kitchen knife, see. 







words to win by.







but truly escaping classification.	       utterly and mystifyingly....abysmally 

deep.

but ultimately justifiable, comprehensible. 	       compact. 	        real.

post modern poetry for the socially inept twenty-something. and

i was going to say it,         	finally. i was going to tell you.

and you were going to understand it. all. 

whether you wanted to or not. you were going to understand

me. us. we. the universe.

no more pretending 	       we don't know what's really going on here.

that you can't see inside my head, every second

of every hour we spend together.        	that i am not completely

transparent.	







with organs in plain hind-site, etching out my 

circulatory system	        my spine	       and musculature. 

and i had managed to get all that        	into a monologue of sorts. 

i'd considered all the options, 

all of your possible responses 

and the responses to those responses.

i'd condensed all of that into a heady batch of concrete sequential emotions. 

ready to be played out 		       before you. 

every bit of it in tact. 	       every bit of it alive and practically squirming. 

glistening. 

primordial. 

carnal. 

and, above all, well rehearsed.







my palms arched, my neck reasserted it's identity. 

a certain fist hits wood and begins to wait, 

and that last breath informed every undulation of my body

for the next thirty-seven seconds

in preparation for the worst. . .







and then you opened the door to your room

and i saw your face,         and the bend of your hair	
	
and the curve of your wrist against        	the guild of the doorknob. 

and the shock of your feet evenly distributing your weight, 

right down through your toes---sunk in like anchors into the knap
 
of threadbare dormitory carpeting . . . was all too much for me.

grounded. you. totally grounded. an alien thing. the complete antithesis of me.

you could have pushed me over 

with a fingernail-tip.		       you could have exhaled 

and i would have blown away.







and i forgot it all. 	        somehow---every well placed line of it;

every touch of contrived speech fell from my lips

like honey on to lead	       in a sigh whose screaming disappointment cannot

be approximated in words, or ignored by anyone else---it seems---

but . . . the two of us.	

god damn you. 

and







that's what he does, i thought.	we all have roles in life, in history, and that's his.

the part he plays best.

making me forget all i had to say to him

with a single  goofy look, 

or just a calculated smile, and a hand molded to the small of my back.

with all your defenses in tact,

with all the props ready and solid and waiting

you say:

come in. where've you been?







and we play the game		       again.

• Chy Ryan Spain

to POETRY REFERENCE PAGE

BACK to ME!