The Language Of You

If it weren’t for the twisting willows
constantly brushing across my face,
I could have loved you.
If it weren’t for the illicit yellowness
of the sun interrupting the pale ocean
currents in my mind.
I could have loved you.
If it weren’t for oceans being used or alluded
to in every damn love poem ever written,
I could have loved you.
If it weren’t for the green and white needles
on the snow drenched terrain of your
emotional psychie,
I could have loved you.
If it weren’t for the hammer of the gods
pulsing through your veins,
if it weren’t for me having to wind my
way through the war zone of waterfalls
and moose crap, bears attacking me while
I’m just trying to empty out all this garbage
from the back of my car,
I could have loved you.
I tried to love you-
Through Moroccan villages and mint tea
strewn across Main St.
Through suicidal lust of journals on the
campus of the poetic goddess of the dark
where young girls want to be lesbians,
but only until graduation.
I tried to love you even through the barren
fields of the Kali Ghandaki river valley.
Shaggy Mongolian Ponies trying to knock
me off mile high cliffs, just like you used
to do to me, with your stare. Laughing at
the yack shit on my shoe, wondering how
it is I put these shorts on backwards.
I remember you smirking at that half blownout
ruin of a mountain on the Pacific,
blasted apart from just the flick of your hair.
I remember the shapeliness of your breasts. 
They melted entire continents.
The Rockies reduced to one vast liquefied
erogenous zone. I remember. I remember -
I remember you.

~ Russ Green

"The Language Of You" by Russ Green Appeared in The Examination Anthology