Love You Like [For Ari]

i love you like

periwinkle african skies, equatorial dusk

kalliopeian songs

& mangoes from african trees

like nighttime skies over the desert of wadi rum

& tibet

orion doing cartwheels across the firmament

i love you like bahian breakfast & waterfalls

cliffs to dive into clear water

& empty beaches (in places where portuguese would be spoken if anywhere else were there)

from sitio do conde to beira

i love you like i like to write things

& start philosophical arguments

like i like hard questions

& big stories

i love you like i like wine

& kids who make pretty patterns on scan-tron sheets

like i like dante’s paradiso & cinema paradiso

i love you like i like road trips to mexico

chased by hurricanes

chasing our future

together

like i like tostones from the chinese restaurant in washington heights

like warm new york nights

& sunny san francisco days

like i like camping in the redwoods

& campfires

i love you like the paintings at altamira:

handprints on the womb of the earth

dance of prey & predator

like barcelona’s tiki-taka

(& the knicks)

i love you like the carolina mountains

that you taught me to love.

& i love you like i used to like blunted lakefront afternoons

& winedrenched poetry-filled evenings at 54th & woodlawn

where a dreadlocked b-girl smiled at me across our front porch

(i remember)

& i am still smiling

3-10-13

happy birthday