What Is Tangletown Poem by MARINA GIPPS

Ever wish to return,
to see them again,
leave them a kiss,
saying don't change?

Now I need protection
from the state bird,
the loon;
we share the same space
inhabiting one another,

Juxtaposing my wings
for his, it isn't easy,
Black box memoir after falling for
the confessions of pol-pot.
What is trivial pursuit?
A man unwilling to share
his paintings with a secret love?
So she goes into a landscape,

Unaware he is following her
in a fog within a gilded frame.
Awash in blue with wilted parasols,
the emotions stagnated by paralysis.
(He painted this image on a perfect white space,
destroying it unwillingly.)

This is Tangletown: knowing that there are a million
copies of persons like mobile sculptures, replaceable.
Those unrelenting in the pursuit of creating
by mesmering the unsuspecting into love.

And if you ask why i write this poem today,
as if any day would really matter,
i respond simply: i cannot write a love poem,

Afraid you'll laugh me down a beaten path where
cats lie hissing and obsessed with their privates,
where the slightest mew resembles death.

So i begin the courtship with an unwritten book,
this silence as if emotions had wings-
lines streaming tears, somehow becoming art

In a kiss or residue;
which is Tangletown.