POEM: With Love

With Love
by Mike McGee

I believe love can save the world
it cannot be bottled
only born, bruised and breathed
I want to make mouths out of the wrists of sadness
may they learn to speak only in the bloody tongues of compassion

I am ready to love
ready to win, lose or draw upon
there’s so much to do before the referee counts me out

I am ready to be love, be loved and be lovely
We can be love
like soft boys to hard girls
let my heart be a smooth stone of petrified wood
resting on the pages of your autobiography
keeping you from blowing away

Let’s kiss beyond gender
a kiss to any body that cannot cry
and—if needed—we’ll keep it in daydreams
until they can abandon old pride and bad jobs

We can hold you
like we are fingers
guarding you, our champion thumb
We cannot fight without you

We cannot grasp this life without you
We cannot introduce my true self without you there
to hitch us a ride to the next town
where we will find other lovers who
want to walk hand in hand
with whoever they choose
and by the hand we will take them
confident in our carriage
over uncertain roads

We can be one who loves
the kids who wake up to get beat up
the talkers who turn the heat up
the swingers at their first meet up
the girls who leave the seat up

I am learning love the hardest way possible
by pushing it up against a wall of logic
as armor
as sword
as shield
as a last name
as a first word
Because I love Mondays and
you’ll be there some day
some Monday and
you’ll need someone like me to be
a Monday person
or a morning person
or maybe just a person who’s present
There many out there like me ready to gift you our presence
don’t be afraid to ask

Let us remind you that you need love
I remind myself often
Because I’ve learned that some of the best love this world has to offer
is self-taught,
taken back,
and it is given out like overstock from
a garden in good hands

I am just one person
out of so many who love you
so take it
make it yours
we’ll all be better off if you hang onto it for a while
then you can pass it along when the time is right with the right person

But most of the time
Love looks like someone
who looks at you like you are made of a lost translation of that same love
sometimes love is boomerang
sometimes love is an accidental grenade
we think is too heavy to keep and carry
we toss it around like it is filled with a sad forever
Like we’re just holding it for someone else
or we didn’t ask for it to begin with, but
it turns out that I am that love and I am here

We are here
and maybe some of this love won’t come back to us, but​
tomorrow we will remind ourselves again to carry our hearts in our stomachs
so that we can love from the gut
​and​ we will laugh again
and I hope you will join us