Substantive
Substances
for D.B.A.

you are not even a little bit
better than I am, my darling
that I reject utterly and entirely

your response to me or to my response
to you, implies that you are- because young
or because female or because of these combined,
one price meat and I, another

certainly to your mind, I am much much less expensive

a pound or more of mine, of me, of meat that I am
not enough to trade for an ounce of the meat
that you are

more like the difference, the price
of an ounce of silver, compared with
the price or worth of an ounce of gold

but you are silver and I am gold
in spite of your being young, in spite
of your being female

all this time to cultivate, refine, accumulate
the substance comprising me

how can we compare 19 with 56
and what we've been able to put
in these years or to have, for 19 years,
compared with 56 years, maintained, unscratched
that core, of which Earnest Hemingway
often wrote and often spoke

you are wonderful, I have been as wonderful
for a longer time

it is in you that I see myself reflected
my love and passion for you have to do with
my being able to love myself in you
like I could not otherwise

I am not in love with you because
you are wonderful and I am not
not because you are cheese
and I am snot


© Obediah Michael Smith, 2011
11:48 p.m. 07.03.11