For Jon

Last night I cried
from reading
your facebook.

your poems...
I didn't know
it could be like that.

Deep.
On facebook.

I saw you standing with your friends and lovers,
posed together.

Your people seem lovely.

And:

You speak another language.
Black clothes.
No camera smile.
It feels very hard,
without a net,
without any soft
primary colors
or silly hats.
Clear, unclouded eyes
looking out through the lens.

Yet I sit here crying
over all that black,
and all that somber,
and all that beauty
in crisp words folded together
and fanned out perfect.

It's another kind of spark.


...

Spark is my unit of measurement.
Do you emit,
or only absorb
joy, pain, human?

I cry thinking of black holes,
and infinite silence,
and muted selves,
and concrete lives
all laid bare,
wearing only black
to match itself.

I want my joy on my sleeve, speckled with stains
from eating, and living, messy and honest.

---

[I wrote this about a friend I've gone on a couple of dates with, an interesting person, a match in most ways except he's atheist, and I'm more an animist/shamanist. He doesn't like to email much; that might be the deal-breaker!