“A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a homesickness or a lovesickness.It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment.A complete poem is one where an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.”

- Robert Frost

My Russian Doll of Desires

They are endless...my wants, my needs, my dreams.

I achieve one goal - and instantly move onto another. Never satisfied, never still, ever restless. There are points in my life when I will feel that I must, simply must have something. And I go out and get it. I don't rest till I have it. And then, the familiar feeling of discontent comes creeping in. And I start searching afresh. For what, or whom, I really have no clue.

And then there are times when my desires will be thwarted. And my brain and heart are unable to comprehend how, when I wanted something so badly, the universe snatched it away from me. Those days, it takes some time for me to reach equilibrium. And ironically, I only forget the old loss when I am restless for something new.

It's like a constant see-saw. And when I try to balance myself, I am forced to evaluate all my desires, all my dreams. To weigh them all up against each other. So that I can stack them for the perfect balance. I try to see which are too heavy, so that I can discard the added weight on my life. And which are too light, so that I know that they don't really need to be my priority.

But it's difficult. Because every time I look inside, I discover parts of me I'd forgotten, wants that I never knew existed. All so snugly ensconced within one another that one desire is only revealed when the other is peeled away - either by your practicality, or life's ruthlessness.

You love someone. You fail in that love. You discard it. Only to realize that within that love there is still a core of desire. You find a object for that desire. Lust maybe. You go after it. But it remains unfulfilled. You learn to ignore that need. But those feelings need to go somewhere. They change direction and become a quest for companionship instead. If you're lucky you get it. Else you try to settle for just understanding. And at times, compromise for tolerance.

Your needs get smaller and smaller. But those larger dreams remain. And they all take up so much space. In your life, in your thoughts. So you put them all together, one inside the other, close together, like those Russian dolls.

So that no one can see, or even guess at those layers that make you up. So that you remain invulnerable. So that if someone hurts the outside, you still have some dreams locked away inside to draw strength from. And you wait for someone to take all the pieces out, and put it all back together again.

And you paint cheerful faces on the wood outside. And you pretend it's all a game. Endlessly.

The Archipelago Of Kisses - By Jeffrey McDaniel

We live in a modern society. Husbands and wives don't
grow on trees, like in the old days. So where
does one find love? When you're sixteen it's easy,
like being unleashed with a credit card
in a department store of kisses. There's the first kiss.
The sloppy kiss. The peck.
The sympathy kiss. The backseat smooch. The we
shouldn't be doing this kiss. The but your lips
taste so good kiss. The bury me in an avalanche of tingles kiss.
The I wish you'd quit smoking kiss.
The I accept your apology, but you make me really mad
sometimes kiss. The I know
your tongue like the back of my hand kiss.

As you get older, kisses become scarce. You'll be driving
home and see a damaged kiss on the side of the road,
with its purple thumb out. If you
were younger, you'd pull over, slide open the mouth's
red door just to see how it fits.

Oh where does one find love? If you rub two glances, you get a smile.
Rub two smiles, you get a warm feeling.
Rub two warm feelings and presto-you have a kiss.

Now what? Don't invite the kiss over
and answer the door in your underwear. It'll get suspicious
and stare at your toes. Don't water the kiss with whiskey.
It'll turn bright pink and explode into a thousand luscious splinters,
but in the morning it'll be ashamed and sneak out of
your body without saying good-bye,
and you'll remember that kiss forever by all the little cuts it left
on the inside of your mouth. You must
nurture the kiss. Turn out the lights. Notice how it
illuminates the room. Hold it to your chest
and wonder if the sand inside hourglasses comes from a
special beach. Place it on the tongue's pillow,
then look up the first recorded kiss in an encyclopedia: beneath
a Babylonian olive tree in 1200 B.C.

But one kiss levitates above all the others. The
intersection of function and desire.
The I'll love you through a brick wall kiss.
Even when I'm dead, I'll swim through the Earth,
like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next to your bones.

Physics 101

Conservation of Momentum: The total momentum in a closed or isolated system remains constant.

The momentum of my heart, when we are alone, remains the same. It keeps missing a beat. 


First Law of Motion: An object at rest remains at rest unless acted upon by a force. An object in motion remains in motion, and at a constant velocity, unless acted upon by a force.

Life was predictable. And static. And then I was swept away.


Third Law of Motion: When one body exerts a force on a second body, the second body simultaneously exerts a force equal in magnitude and opposite in direction to that of the first body.

Resistance. And attraction. You pushed my boundaries. And pulled me in. 


Law of universal gravitation: Every point mass in the universe attracts every other point mass with a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.

We clicked. The attraction I experience is in a natural consequence of the person I’ve discovered you to be. The ease I feel with you is inversely proportional to the distance I insist on keeping with others.