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let harm pass

by Gabriel Ricard

I can’t promise I’ll always protect you,
but when the momentarily fazed start driving
on the sidewalk at fifty miles an hour,
I’ll get you out of the way.

And then I’ll try to soar right over that crazy bastard,
which is to say I’ll let the son of a bitch smash into me,
because I’m too lazy to step aside, and let harm pass.

It’s not that you’re helpless.
We both know you’re not. That one night. The rain
turned red, hit us from the left and right,
and battered our bodies like a ferocious pinball machine,
with a taste for getting losers lost in the mechanics.

When we gave up most of our self-control.
When our sins failed to register one of those neat trophies.
When you saw ghosts from our childhood, and grabbed my arm in that way.

You’re not helpless. If you leave town anytime soon,
it will only be because you chose to open the windows during a hurricane.

It’s just that I can only bring so much to the midnight march. I can only sink
so far into the formidable garbage heap of refrigerators filled with old pennies.

I can only say so many kind, sincere things
with the limited number of breaths I tend to have in an hour.

My astonishment that you take them all,
that you learned how to remain calm when stealing a car,
remains the same now as it did when we were much younger.

My amazement that you are much more interested
in what I have to say while alive and in constant, occasionally-cool motion
is as remarkable to me as the first time you bit my tongue for me.

One of us is going to go mad one of these days. One of us is going to walk
right into a fourteen-picture, Technicolor pileup on Route 45.

I don’t think it’s going to be you.
And I’m pretty sure you don’t think so either.

What the hell are you doing being in love with me?

I’d ask,
but I still haven’t learned how to speak French.

Or whatever the hell it is that you’re saying.
You don’t even mind what a lazy bastard I’ve become.

Or always have been.

01/18/2013

Posted on 01/18/2013
Copyright © 2024 Gabriel Ricard

Member Comments on this Poem
Posted by Chris Sorrenti on 01/18/13 at 03:12 PM

Brilliant love poem as only you could write it. Touché old man.

Posted by George Hoerner on 01/18/13 at 03:47 PM

Amazing what a woman in love will put up with isn't? And I speak from experience! Of all the women I've ever known I don't know one other who have spent this long putting up with me! Nice write Gabe.

Posted by Kristina Woodhill on 01/22/13 at 01:44 AM

"The rain turned red, hit us from the left and right, and battered our bodies like a ferocious pinball machine, with a taste for getting losers lost in the mechanics." Loved this. Really liked the window and the hurricane line. You sustain the amazement at this kind of love with your unique quips and imagery. Thanks for this.

Posted by Johnny Crimson on 01/22/13 at 04:26 PM

No need for French this was excellent. :)

Posted by Johanna May on 02/01/13 at 04:37 AM

Sometimes you paint love haphazardly or ungently but comes much closer to its real form than the softest words, and it is all the more moving, this poem proves this

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