Jack-In-The-Box
for T.L.C.

i.
do you know how far
and upon what wings I go for words
the deeds I do
attempts to please you

someone to invest in light with,
in life with

who would mind
how we’re connected

does God, who has himself
linked us thus, made us from dust
from scratch

fowl scratch, chicken scratch
I remember learning to form letters
at St. Margaret’s Church School

look what letters I’m writing now
48 years later

have I told you of George Orwell
or Eric Arthur Blair,
author of Animal Farm and 1984
he died at 47 in 1950

forgive me, but death
is often on my mind
and you are life to me, oxygen to me

still waiting to see “Notturno” again,
saw it in Paris,
film of Franz Peter Schubert
who died at 31

he too had an attachment to a girl
younger than you by far
even as he is younger than I am by far

I’m older than Shakespeare
I can die any day, I always knew
death was coming this way

every week-day morning
the Hotel Union’s bus
passes to pick up workers
it stops before my door

desired to keep you up past 4
when you must be up
when the sun comes up

ii.
not my intention to have you die
with me, my desire is that you’d live
to a ripe old age
you’ll be as old as I am someday

I want you to remember me
how fiercely I loved you
one warn December
and the poems I wrote

even if you can’t tell me,
reflecting,
I want you to tell someone
that I meant the world to you

I’ll want it to be true,
I’ll want it to be so

I’ll get to live out more
than my share of years
safe in your heart

promise me, though I know
you don’t like promising or promises

you must have seen Titanic,
the film, heard the singing from it

when we part love,
since we must eventually,
death about me like icy sea,

let it be like that, in spite of all
out difference, our distances

in spite of the people in our lives
who might come between us

pop up like jack-in-the-box to scare us
along with Christian Council members

wanting to prescribe where
and through whose veins,
whose arteries, love should flow

you and I, love, somehow, at times,
as if we had a single system
of blood vessels

like a couple in bed


© Obediah Michael Smith, 2008
5:05 a.m. 01.02.08