“love”

 

I think love is the most beautiful thing

in the world,

and I don’t give a fuck,

because I have no original ideas.

 

I’m a pathetic man

whose goal is to read poetry

in order

to get women

to fall in love with him,

and you’d think I was reprimanding myself

and revealing my horrible dark side

by saying that,

but I was really saying

“women who hear this, fall in love with me, or else,”

because that’s what it comes down to—

an ultimatum,

life or death,

and sure, may be I’m being extreme,

but you walk around and tell me

that things aren’t extreme,

jesus,

I’ve seen a man jack off to a gap window display,

so don’t tell me that love isn’t important.

 

and maybe you didn’t get that series of lines,

that’s OK,
most of them are subtext

designed to impress people

who know too much about art,

all you need to listen to is

the 12 percent

which contain words like “fuck,”

and “ass,”

and “ride my dongstick, you naughty schoolgirl.”

because in a poem about love

we all need to know the relevant things,

because we’re all looking for the complete definition of love,

if only we could open our encyclopedia brittanicas

and look up love and know,

but love isn’t that easy.

 

they say cupid loved my so called life

and when the show was cancelled

cupid cried and cried and cried and

decided that he was going to fuck up

all of humanity,

and this is why china has trouble with its birthrate

and arkansas rhymes with date rape

and iraq is iraq,

and the lipo-sucked out of California

could be

its own island.

 

but this isn’t a poem about geography,

this is a poem about love,

the bare of my existence,

the reason why I hate valentine’s day

and halloween,

which is about ghosts

and I think you know where I’m going here.

I’m going to the land of girlfriends of halloweens past,

and maybe I’ve only got 3 ghosts in this land,

but this doesn’t mean that they don’t bring their friends,

who are the ghosts of girls who have rejected me,

because girls rarely travel alone in this land.

lydia is from this land.

 

I used to kiss her

while listening to

the cure’s “just like heaven,”

now I don’t see her anymore,

so that song makes me sad,

why must we associate music with

our love lives?

I’m not trying to be profound here,

I’m just saying that music really takes me

back, way back,

and I can’t explain the memory process involved in that,

because I’m not a psychology major,

and maybe

my problem with picking up women

has to do with me always asking,

“what’s your major?”

but that only makes me as cheesy

as 90 percent of guys

looking for women,

and 86 percent of them have women,

so what the deal here?

maybe I shouldn’t think of women in terms

of picking them up,

and maybe I should open up my sensitive side,

but really,

the sensitive side sucks.

I’ve been there.

you can only imagine the kinds of sweaters

they make you wear.

it’s not fair,

love is not fair,

and war is not fair,

and I don’t care what anyone has to say about

any of that,

I feel unloved,

I’m sorry I need people

to tell me I’m cool,

I’m just that way.

aren’t you?

am I the only one?

I know that I can’t be that

misunderstood.

 

but you don’t want to

understand me!

you just want to hear the part

where I talk about my small dick again,

because the asian man will always be plagued

by this rumor

until he is brave enough to fling it out

 and say,

 

“HA! WE ARE GIGANTIC!”

 

this is not the direction

I wanted to take

this poem.

honestly, I just want to be in the arms

of my true love, in a house, in a room,

in a wonderful, perfect world with our

two children,

a boy and a girl,

helga and lamar,

but maybe I should have said this,

woody allen taught us

that marriage is the death trap.

 

I’m almost as old as his girlfriend.

she could be the long lost sister

I’ve been looking for,

maybe my mother gave her away

when we lived in china,

wait, I never lived in china.

I think I’ve begun lying in this poem.

I was hoping to talk about love

for 3.4 minutes

and then

come to a conclusion,

somehow defining love

within the poem,

but

I don’t have any answers

and I’m looking for help from anyone,

because love has got me fucked up

and dying,

because I feel retarded without anyone to hold me,

and maybe that’s sentimental,

but what’s wrong with sentimental?

 

I just need love—

 

to self: fuck you, I’m OK!

 

you see, I can’t even decide what I need

much les understand what I’m saying.

you see, all I’m saying

is

someone love me.

 

 

 

—Beau Sia

(first performed at

Marymount Manhattan College,

New York City, fall 1996)

 

[taken from the book SLAM, pages 54-58]