Bedroom Eyes

Today’s post goes out to one of my best friends, Ms. Boo. It’s her birthday today! Ms. Boo and I met the very first day of college. We’ve ridden our fair share of ups and downs in our lives. When I think of some of the best nights of my life, many of them have been with Ms. Boo. She has amazing taste in music, and we love to dance, sing at the top of our lungs, and we’ve had our fair share of crazy nights together. When I think of my life and hers, we’ve ridden many ups and downs together. She is truly a soul-friend. We have amazing times together when we’re out on the town and we have amazing times together talking and sharing some of our greatest heartbreaks. She’s the kind of friend that took me to the hospital in college when I broke my leg in the middle of the night and offered to come check on me when I drank too much Rhine wine and called her to tell her, “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.” We’ve had pub crawls in the afternoons and danced on the streets until the early morning hours. She has incredible taste in music and loves good poetry. This poem is probably one of the first poems I wrote about her. I have many where I might slip in a line or something that was said. This poem was written years ago at a dingy bar where Ms. Boo kept telling me this kid was giving her bedroom eyes. I kept asking her to show me what those were and she would practice. It’s sort of become a legendary night in our friendship, so I figured in honor of her I’d post the poem. I love you Ms. Boo! Happy Birthday!

Bedroom Eyes

You are confident the young hipster has given you bedroom eyes,
“Teenage prayers are so confident,” I laugh.
We are eating stale popcorn. I suggest “Purple Rain”
The draft of the open door
Brings in ideas of persimmons and the town writer
You are convinced had an affair with Ginsberg.

The hipsters dance in the middle of the room.
Their bodies moving freely and confident.
The way one does when they remember
It feels good to be somebody.

You can still smell parking lot nights inside them,
Riipe with the stale smell of nothing better to do,
Nowhere better to go.

“I’m not a fan of thespians turned troubadours,” I announce
To you while watching them. The air perfect
For airstrikes and inconvenient political actions-

Their vintage clothes
Wreak of thrift store bargain binds
And droop off their skeletal frames.

Colors faded from so many cycles of
Suicidal coffee shops and domestic violence.
They are sleepwalkers in dark halls
To the truths of the fabrics they wear.

“Two more drinks, and I tell you.”
“I love sea and cake, piano playing and lemonade,
beginnings and ends, I drunkenly stutter.

Once a largehearted boy,
Dreaming through white headphones,
Nighttime gals, and their endless streets
Of kissy tell all poems. I might be
writing one now. It’s interrupted
by a man selling dead flowers to men
“for their beautiful ladies.”

A group of electrosexual kids walk downstairs
From a party. I have culture bully eyes tonight.
One of the hipsters in his trash can jeans,
Blows a ringlet of smoke in our direction.
As if he’s asking you to make love to him.
.
He’s giving me bedroom eyes again, you laugh.
“Yeah, and what are bedroom eyes?” I ask
You take a drag of your cigarette, focus,
And deepen your eyes. Piled with an intense heat….
Suddenly sparks. I unzip my jacket.

In the dank bar surrounded by high rises and busy streets that have
Replaced much of what we had known. I look at you,
Practicing bedroom eyes and a familiarity washes over me.
I’m eight years old smoking a candy cigarette singing the song I wrote,
Dark Clouds on my Honeymoon. Staring into your bedroom eyes,
I recognize a look that’s familiar, a friend I need to keep.