I am a poet of unlove
I wear shades on blind dates,
I would hate to see what you really look like.
When you say let’s talk about love, I expound
on the reproductive habits of reptiles.
I quote stats and not the stars in your eyes.
I am into the shape of your assets, financial,
not physical.
I look away when women check me out.
I am drawn to girls with high foreheads,
it is easier to turn desire into intellectual attraction.
Having many female friends leads to numerous question
marks, the best form of defining a relational status.
I travel alone. I sleep with a stuffed animal.
It ensures the prejudice of being child-like forever
and invokes the notion of siblings, not stray sparks
of nostalgia that conduct metaphors of love.
I live with my parents.
I am a poet of unlove
If love is water, I am always under an umbrella
when it rains. I say love is wax, earwax;
it clogs what you don’t want to hear and causes
infections. I treat love badly; I compare it to loose
underwear, difficult exams, and garbage disposal
operating procedures. I alliterate only for luck and
leave love for lascivious lions wasting want with
wanton wenches
I am a poet of unlove
I go on dating sites and start conversations
about inconsequential interests; hatred of techno,
a love of pancakes and all forms of cranberries.
Call me an apathetic zombie; I’ll do anything but date.
If we are persistent enough to meet, you are more likely
to get an orgasm running on a treadmill or doing crunches
at the gym than by hanging out with me. A kiss comes
only from Hershey’s or your mother, not from me.
And heavy petting, in my opinion, works best
with a woolly sheep at the zoo.
Do not attempt to lure me up to the roof of parking lots,
or curve seductively into the silhouette of streetlights.
I’ll call the police on you and charge you for substance
abuse, because love is a drug, so stop pushing, ringing
my doorbell and waiting to surprise me. You believe
home is where the heart is, but I, I am never home.
