Love Isn't A Bridge, It's A Rubber Band - Brand New Custom Typewriter Series Poem!
Typewriter Series #3115
There are few things more personal, more vulnerable, than poetry. It’s the ripping out of what’s inside, it’s the displaying of it outside. It’s words born from blood, from tears, from laughter, from hope. From love.
Custom poems (which you can still order!) carry with them a weight, as it’s not just my insides being torn out, it’s yours. I take this seriously, I treat it like the honor it is. I tell your stories in my words, and this is that—this is the weight of a wait endured, the understanding that came after it was survived. Some are not built to be far apart. This is that.
But where did this poem begin? What inspired the bizarre (but hopefully beautiful?) line:
“…when the whale of this year opens its mouth and allows us to swim free,”
That story and many more, as well as the spoken word recording of this, are perks of paid subscriptions. Today, their generosity is allowing you to peek behind the curtain and get a taste. To see my process, my explanation to the poetry I create. Thank you, to all who have become paid subscribers and allowed for this to happen. Thank you.
For those who have not, I hope you’ll upgrade. Join us. I hope you will help keep this Signal Fire lit.
The beginning of COVID was a time I’m sure most of us wish to forget. The fear, the apprehension, the waiting as disease seemed to approach like a tidal wave that made its way across a continent, East to West slowly, then all at once. We endured it, but the ways that we did was as personal as anything ever has been.
Some suffered alone, some huddled with partners or families and rode out the terror together. Some had just ended relationships, some had just begun them. This poem was someone who had done just that. Someone who had found the person they knew they needed, only to be torn asunder, to be stretched across a world and forced to wait.
Those years felt like whales that swallowed us whole, they felt like giant behemoths, creatures dark and silent in their approach, in their giant maw that opened as if on hinge to gulp us all into darkness. We felt like shipwrecked castaways, hoping for lanterns in the deep bellies of the beasts that found us. That consumed us all.
We swam free, we lucky few who still had strength left for swimming, and when we did we emerged with promises on our lips.
Love, we learned, is not a bridge built to span across all the distances we must fight to shrink. Love, is a rubber band, love is an elastic that is tied to the souls of each involved. We can pull it, it will allow, but the further we go the stronger it wishes to rebound, to shrink of its own accord, to allow us to touch once more.
We pull, it resists, we stretch, it recoils. This is the way of love, I think. At least here, at least in this story.
What will YOUR story say in the poem I craft for you? What will it speak of, what truths will fall from its lips, inked and stamped by typewriter into old page?
Let me write for you. Let me find the light hiding in whatever darkness you have survived. Let me speak of love in the ways you know not how. I’m ready.
Here, for those who enjoy it, is the spoken word of this poem. I Hope you like it.
I love you all. Be good.
Well done, Master! It is a true art form to join physics and romance in the same place! Ah yes, it is true that the rubbery part about love is that its pull and power gets stronger with the distance between two people. Although, at some point, increasing distance does seem to have caused a few bands to snap. And life complicates and entangles things when we love more than one person at the same time. More than one rubber band holding things together seems to end up in a twisted ball of tension. Of course, a cynic would say “love can be like when two people hold a rubber band, because when one lets go, it hurts the other more”. I mean, one could be humane, politely reduce the tension and wiggle free. That's how healthy relationships work. And if both let go at the same time, it just flies off to ensnare some other unsuspecting couple. My personal experience suggests that a little tension between two people is more interesting than benign neglect. Perhaps we need a poem on the benefits of the rubber band theory on relationships… hence the axiom: “Familiarity breeds contempt, while distance enjoys respect”. But my tiny Buddha tells me that “change is good for relationships, but changing together is better.” One of my favorite mantras: “Change is learning. Learning is growing. Growing is living. So live.” … and love a little.