Today I'm thinking of all the people not in love: I'm with you!
          I'd like to say, though one of the conditions
Of not being in love is that you can't hear other people not in love.
          You can only hear beautiful people, who have
Symphonies for faces: Grace Kelly, Dominique Sanda, Emmanuelle
          Béart, ah, beautiful (can you hear the cellos
And clarinets?), but hmm, maybe not, they are beautiful but distant:
          and what we want is not only the beautiful
But the possible: for what is love but an opening of the possible?
          To be possible you must be new and nearby:
You must also look available, or the windows will inevitably close:
          oh Alexs with an "s" at the record store,
Alexs so inscrutable, with your long blonde hair and Sanda-like face
          and that Sanskrit tattoo on your wrist,
You died, you died that day I bought the new Tom Waits and said,
          "Hi, Alexs, right?" and you said, "Huh,"
Nodding your head and not looking up: Jo Ann vanquished you,
          Jo Ann of the perfect mouth and imperfect
Yoga technique, who gave me her number in the YMCA parking lot
          but halfway through our first coffee date
Revealed she was married: now I'm struggling, really struggling,
          to keep her alive. I walk around these days
And my footsteps go, Nobody, nobody. I cup possibility in my hands
          like a mouse. Oh you out there not in love,
I know how it is, when you wake up in the morning and look down
          at your body like an émigré looking back
Disgustedly at his homeland; when you peer through the blinds
          and the world is nothing but a grey side;
When you feel each day is a dart flung at a target you keep missing
          because who, or where, or what is the target?
The soul cannot live like this, the soul needs a cable, a clasp, its talons
          are hungry for a peak, there's too much space
And it's thinning out like smoke: you step out of the furrow of the future
          onto an asphalt present. Worse, there's
A whiff of sin about you, because not to be in love with a person
          should never stop you from being
In love with the world: and the problem is you've fallen out of love
          with the world. You've come to hear
An underlying Goddamit! in everything, and never notice the trees
          tossing their heads in the wind like conductors.

___

When I'm not in love I do a lot of shopping at Target.