If You Listen

My two best friends took their rhythm
with them when we went to the bar
and afterwards, drunk in our
cars we screamed out the windows
to anyone who'd listen,

"I love you!"

just to see how many
people would smile.

We ran it up the flagpole
to keep tabs on the lovers,
the overt kind and the under-
cover, incognito breed that
never did seem to need any
proof that love existed
from anyone but themselves.

But they smiled when we screamed.

We didn't need proof, either,
my friends and I, because we
wanted to be the proof that the
truth of the matter was this:

Love loves, and loving,
lives.

We wanted to live love like life
never existed, holler down the streets
with our fingers twisted in the hair
of the beast pop-culture has become and
ride that bitch over every numb face
we could get its' paws on; wake up,
assholes and fall in love with somebody!
Else nobody's ever gonna remember you.
People raise the biggest monuments
to what they love.

And if you don't believe
that, then I'll see your bullshit
and raise you one Taj Mahal,
raise it from the ground
brick by brick until my face
is slick with sweat and tears
shed for a woman long dead
before I was a molecule in
a twinkie or a gleam in my
parents' eyes.

Soaring beauty never walked
out of hatred and if your heart is
cold then I can walk behind you
and talk about love until I
need new shoes and my socks
have worn away and my feet
start to bleed,

And you'll never understand
that love is a poetically
transmitted disease.

But if you listen, inside, to
the little voice that never tried
to hide what it felt, the one
Christians call "Jeeeezis!"
because they need to believe
in something outside themselves...

If you listen, you'll hear it say,

"______"