too much passion and a little talent (Friday's Sunday's Poem/Hot Actress 74)

True Love
by Barry Gifford


Your sickness made me

a little sick, it’s

true—I still

feel it

Mayakovsky got down

on his knees

and declared

his love

to his last

mistress

a few hours after

he’d met her

Remember me

at the hotel

in Paris,

on my knees

in the lift?

We’re all the same

men of too much passion

and a little talent—

some a little more

than others

We fool ourselves

into thinking

we’re strong

then complain

the rest of our lives

crippled by

the consequences

_____________________________________________________________

About the poem: This first appeared in The New Yorker, back in February 2009. I'm posting a love poem, of course, because Valentine's Day is Monday, and is there any reason that Valentine's Day is always on February 14 instead of floating around to always be on a weekend? Monday's are the worst possible day to have a holiday (or a day off) in the first place, and putting Valentine's Day on a Monday means that not only do you have to be romantic on Monday, which is virtually impossible, but, let's face it, you also have to celebrate the weekend before.

Like Sweetie and I. Don't tell her, but she's getting the first of her Valentine's presents today (flowers) and then we'll go out to dinner tomorrow night to try to get as much romance in as the two-hour break between when Oldest can come babysit and when we've got to go pick up The Boy from his job will give us, but neither of those are actually Valentine's Day, which means that on Monday, I'm going to give her her actual Valentine's present, which already feels a little anticlimactic, like celebrating Christmas in January.

About the Hot Actress: Making her third appearance on the blog, and second as a Hot Actress, is Jenna Fischer, who's still Pam even though I suspect she's got something else going on because she's on the cover of one of Sweetie's magazines this week, which usually means that she's got an album or movie coming out. Or, probably, a book. Everybody who's anybody gets a book published these days. And people who aren't anybody, too, but nobody hears about those.

Anyway, Jenna Fischer is the Hot Actress because last night, Mr F was watching a video of stunt airplanes on the computer, and he accidentally knocked the magazine with Jenna Fischer on it onto the floor, and as I picked it up Sweetie said "She should be the Hot Actress," after which I (stupidly) made a joke about how 36 is old, forgetting that Sweetie had had a rough day and would take it badly that I thought 36 was old, even jokingly, so I'm posting her here as a makeup present to Sweetie. And also a little for Valentine's Day, which really should be changed to just "the second Saturday in February" so we don't have this problem anymore.