Notebook: Drifting

Here's another poem from the portfolio. I decided to try embedding a video/audio file of me reading this poem. It should be up relatively soon. Enjoy!

Drifting

Thinking about her is like a belly flop.
As the memory of the Godiva curls atop her head
floats past the pool of my vision,
I can feel myself jumping,
launching my body from the spring-board,
a human rocket
shot from Bobby’s backyard mortar,
kicking off my sandals as if they were my smoke-trail.

I am mid-air for merely moments
but it feels like
flying.

Suspended like a trapeze artist –
hands extended, reaching –
terrifying if not for my pure elation;
I am Icarus soaring into the sun.
Like the winged idiot, I start to fall,
my wax feathers melting.

I remember when I first saw her
amid the myriad faces of the cafeteria,
and when our eyes accidentally met
it was like the smack of the near-solid water surface
against my scrawny, teenage frame.
In the flash of blackness I see her face
spinning around me like cartoon stars.
The birds whistle.

Like her cinnamon sweet scent, the water rushes in
and fills my lungs.
An ember from Vulcan’s forge,
it kindles a fire inside my chest.
I burn from inside, my veins curdling
like over-done Campbell’s mushroom soup.

I paddle for the surface, kicking and thrashing
as if gripped by an epileptic seizure.
The floodlights above glare down at me
as if they were eyes of her stern father.
I break the water
gasping for every precious breath,
wishing she was a mermaid
from whose lips I could draw life
and stay beneath forever.

Floating on my back, breathing,
I think of her,
the humming glug of the pool filter reassuring,
like her deep, belly laugh
when she finds something really, really funny
that she is so ashamed of.
I drift by.