Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Forms of Love by Kim Addonizio




Forms of Love

by Kim Addonizio

I love you but I'm married.
I love you but I wish you had more hair.
I love you more.
I love you more like a friend.
I love your friends more than you.
I love how when we go into a mall and classical muzak is playing,
you can always name the composer.
I love you, but one or both of us is/are fictional.
I love you but "I" am an unstable signifier.
I love you saying, "I understand the semiotics of that" when I said, "I
had a little personal business to take care of."
I love you as long as you love me back.
I love you in spite of the restraining order.
I love you from the coma you put me in.
I love you more than I've ever loved anyone, except for this one guy.
I love you when you're not getting drunk and stupid.
I love how you get me.
I love your pain, it's so competitive.
I love how emotionally unavailable you are.
I love you like I'm a strange backyard and you're running from the
cops, looking for a place to stash your gun.
I love your hair.
I love you but I'm just not that into you.
I love you secretly.
I love how you make me feel like I'm a monastery in the desert.
I love how you defined grace as the little turn the blood in the
syringe takes when you're shooting heroin, after you pull back
the plunger slightly to make sure you hit the vein.
I love your mother, she's the opposite of mine.
I love you and feel a powerful spiritual connection to you, even
though we've never met.
I love your tacos! I love your stick deodorant!
I love it when you tie me up with ropes using the knots you
learned in Boy Scouts, and when you do the stoned Dennis
Hopper rap from Apocalypse Now!
I love your extravagant double takes!
I love your mother, even though I'm nearly her age!
I love everything about you except your hair.
If it weren't for that I know I could really, really love you.


"Forms of Love" by Kim Addonizio, from Lucifer at the Starlite.


The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread. ~Mother Teresa

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Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own. ~Robert Heinlein

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Love doesn't sit there like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all of the time, made new. ~Ursula K. LeGuin

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5 comments:

Kelly said...

This woman has a real way with words!! I always think of that red dress poem of hers.....

Our forecast is looking really hot for next week. How about yours?

Woman in a Window said...

Driving to work today I was thinking on the nature of love. And just as I thought I'd gotten it all figured out I wondered if others thought completely differently from me, and then I had to start all over again. But I think I've got it. And you know what? It's not as magical as I'd like. It's almost like finding out that M&M's can cure cancer and it's so stupid you're embarassed to tell anyone, so you keep it quiet, the greatest secret ever.

by the way
love you
xo
erin

Pam said...

Yes, she does have a way with words. Love it. Also love all the photos on your blog. :)

GYPSYWOMAN said...

LOVE LOVE this one, lady! no, really, i do - i love it...if only...
;)

great post!!!

* said...

A fun, kicky poem. I loved the Boy Scout knots bit the best. :)

PS: The LeGuin quote is a new one for me. Fab. Makes me want to make some bread now...