i
LAMBDA 11
So Simple
A poem is written, the typical characters are drawn,
a man and woman condensed within the margins.
The woman, a sketch, the artist’s imagination running wild,
scratched in with uncertainty. Androgynous features.
So simple.
He draws them in medias res,
already in love, the hard part is over.
The rain sweeps over the roof,
careening over nonexistent gutters,
enveloping the lovers within.
Love is all the same, the poet thinks.
Why complicate things? Two men
From his past become a man and a woman.
Does it matter whether the love is heterosexual,
homosexual, asexual, hypersexual... Til just draw
the usual suspects, the normal characters, he says to no one.
It’s for convenience. After all, the issue of the poem
is not the characters, but the way one feels-trapped by time,
or the way the other man whistles when depressed.
So two men become a man and a woman, love smears the text
until the palpitating margins vibrate slowly outward and vanish,
blotting out the incessant distinction of fiction versus reality.
So simple.
The man used to take the man’s hand,
but it could have been a woman’s.