In Response To Your Quantum, My Mechanical Chest, Of Treasures Not Jewels, An Atomic Jest:

And do you pretend patience,

And caution, my heart?

When we badly trained ninjas

Steal kisses in the dark.

And do we not seek then

To be now found out?;

The psychoanalytic mind

Sees danger and doubt.

And in semicolons I

Can move all about

My heart's tight corners,

Comprehend my drought.

But you asked for my treasure,

The chest that I claim

Grows waiting for you

When spoken by name.

So listen awhile,

For I could not stop singing

This song that moves in me

And waters beginnings.

In part it's projection

Of my top ideal

Of love and of honor

Of soul forged with steel.

And partly it's you

And it's us these three months

And partly it's dreaming

Of my future wants.

But always it's words

That come from what's true,

And always it's I,

Please take what speaks to you:

You give back my mind

That's led by my heart,

That I keep on losing

In faces and work.

The words you push out

Of your boundless depths

Provoke a temptation

To match you at best,

To play and to top,

To impress and stretch,

To grow myself up,

As I feel in my chest.

You are the one vision

Of my better self,

Of who I do know

I should have let out

Years before now

And now and ahead.

At each tiny step

I'll lift up my head.

In the small years

So far offered me,

To take and to make

To learn to be free,

I've chosen a few things,

Some philosophy,

A scripture that's mine,

Me Morality.

And in that sacred text

That I write constantly

I still reaffirm a kind of bravery:

The greatest achievement,

The greatest gift,

The greatest honor

That could fall from my lips,

Could come from my hands,

Could flow from my stream,

Could shine from my stars,

Could hold soothingly,

Is for my love

(The study of me)

To protect his stillness,

The moments of need,

The moments of furrows

And frowns and stalled tears,

Protect his solitude

From far and from near.

My greatest love,

To offer myself,

Is to seek to be brave

For somebody else.

But to seek too to choose

Who owns that grand role,

To seek to be worthy

To have and to hold

To give what I would want

Given to me:

For we all are alone,

Interdependently.

So, bold, handsome human,

So, spiraling whirl,

So, earth-toned eyes

That change with the world.

Keep on keeping on,

Throw language this way,

However you speak it,

However you say

Yourself to the stars

And the universal Time,

Whatever you need

Just ask it in rhyme,

Or prose or in essays

That really are flowers

Where every printed stroke

Could fill you for hours,

Ask it of me,

This solitary child.

She'll stand on her own

As she answers in style,

And offer this treasure,

Her chest that you stir,

And no matter the direction

She'll try for your twirl.

And though we be two,

The miracle lies

In translated language

From two distinct lives,

And from the two worlds

A mirror appears

Of light and of darkness

Of laughs and of tears.

This glass in between,

A transparent reflection

Of more than the two,

A discovered spectrum,

A working creation,

Movement ever towards

This shared two-way mirror

And vision of lords.