And then there’s poetry. I do this thing. I don’t especially like this thing I do, but I do it. I save poems. I keep the ones I love the most to myself and I give them away in secret. They’re reserved for deliberate moments and deliberate people. I’m sure it’s some sort of vanity. I guess it’s a particularly flattering light you catch when you’ve aided in the discovery of something great.

So, knowing that, this is my favorite(favoritefavorite) love poem. It’s not an obscure one, maybe you’ve read it before. It’ll kill you all over again. Keep it only half a secret.

Mon Semblable, Stephen Dunn

I like things my way
every chance I get.
A limit doesn’t exist

when it comes to that.
But please, don’t confuse
what I say with honesty.

Isn’t honesty the open yawn
the unimaginable love
more than truth?

Anonymous among strangers
I look for those
with hidden wings,

and for scars
that those who once had wings
can’t hide.

Though I know it’s unfair,
I reveal myself
one mask at a time.

Does this appeal to you,
such slow disclosures,
a lifetime perhaps

of almost knowing one another?
I would hope you, too,
would hold something back,

and that you’d always want
whatever unequal share
you had style enough to get.

Altruism is for those
who can’t endure their desires.
There’s a world

as ambiguous as a moan,
a pleasure moan
our earnest neighbors

might think a crime.
It’s where we could live.
I’ll say I love you,

which will lead, of course,
to disappointment,
but those words unsaid

poison every next moment.
I will try to disappoint you
better than anyone ever has.

When I was little I’d make movies in my head about the life I assumed I’d be leading after gritting my teeth long enough through the hassle of childhood.  This was the song I imagined playing at my wedding.  I probably haven’t fancied myself a bride since I started bleeding, but this song still sounds to me exactly like being in love feels.

Maybe nothing in the world can ever sound as good to you as that first soul record will.

Ice Cream Song by the Dynamics

Thank you for these words of encouragement, they’re writing.  It was exactly what I needed to hear.

The contrast between a seasoned Lindsay and a somewhat eerily paralyzed Nicks will remind us all that people who make beautiful art give no promise of being even intrinsically TOLERABLE human beings.  It’s about as comfortable as I imagine sitting through a ten minute cut of Woody Allen getting self-righteous on behalf of Roman Polanski or something.  All I’m saying is, might take you a while to fully recover your affections.

In the Studio with Fleetwood Mac

Here’s a ghoulish exercise: imagine if Stevie Nicks was your MOM.  She’d be like driving you to school when you missed the bus one morning and the two of you would sit in the parking lot fogging up the windows a bunch while she made you slog through her ninety six minute demo “edit” of some unicorn epic about being a magical and unknowable force much akin to the moon, which might have made you inwardly laugh if you had known at the time that they’d be blowing it up pretty soon cuz scientists are pretty sure its just an old bloated bag that we keep around for posterity.  But still you’d be like sitting there in the parking lot watching Stevie Nicks’ entitled mouth push out all these self-congratulatory puffs of meaningless shit and you’d have to nod like you’re listening because she’s your mom and nobody really likes making their mom cry, but at the same time privately you’d be like, Fuck, I bet somebody’s asking some super fucked up question about their pussy in health class right this very moment and I’m gonna catch such shit at lunch for not being there.  I’m never living this one down.

And in case there was any doubt to with whom the magic truly did lie, from his most recent solo album that gives me great hope of getting older without getting boring:

shut us down by lindsey buckingham

Right now you’re like a sulking cherry tree that hasn’t bloomed for years but then inexplicably erupts with pink flowers in mid-autumn. You’re like a child prodigy who lost her mojo for a while and then suddenly recovers it when her old mentor comes back into her life after a long absence. You’re like a dormant volcano that without any warning spurts out a round of seemingly prophetic smoke signals on the eve of a great victory for the whole world.

Misty felt that life was a battle. You had to fight and think. You had to hack your way through life with your intelligence as a machete cutting down what obstacles you could. You were born knowing nothing: you had to fight for what you knew.

- from Laurie Colwin’s Happy All the Time