The Architecture of a Love Poem

Love’s balustrade, love’s balcony

             a few iron words that can be seen anywhere still

in grocery lists, in laundry hung between two objects,

             an e-mail, in an apology, in a thought about the weather

these rusty words, these rusting gates

              before a breath, Standing in the cold morning

on a cold blue stairs, with a curlicue of coffee

              you look at the word Love written on the

side of the Pharmacy in cherry-vanilla flavored cursive

              because this is where a love poem once stood,

what I am saying right now is secretly built over

              a love poem, the fossils of a cupola,

pink buildings with red hyphens and dashes

              and three red dots, You, second person pink

with shutters you could open with a fingernail

              like in an advent calendar to see sticker scenes

of apartments inside: a radiator, a bare arm,

              two cups by themselves on a table

The mind of the attic still persists up there

              meditative water

and the chairs talking quietly to one another

              It’s now pink rubble, rhyming bricks, and an illicit balcony

the heart had such a fancy elevator

              that it started to look like a bird cage

and once in a lemon-scented fog

               near springtime-fresh trees, I heard two people say,

“Yellow kiss-shaped flowers, telephone flowers,

              are falling from my mouth now”

Now, it’s a set of blue and white checkered apartment buildings

              math problems that are eight stories high

a long division jutting as pollution into the sky

              laundry, cooking spills, gasoline shirts

commas, theories or arguments of boyfriends & girlfriends

              boyfriends & boyfriends, girlfriends & girlfriends,

all hanging out of the window that you opened.