This Paragraph

    A very petite and very beautiful woman rests on her stomach on the floor next to her bed. She is copying passages from The Diary of Anais Nin. I do not know what volume it is, but she is writing very quickly in a state of rapturous lucidity. I stare at her from the couch, envious of her clearly focused joy. Her legs are crossed: they are mostly bare, toned, with a very natural tan. We are listening to electronic music that I understand, but do not recognize. The one thing I know is I will not go to bed with her tonight. This is probably the best choice for both of us, but I still want to. I want it enough to end a sentence in a preposition. She is going to bed and I am going to ride my bike home and write this down instead of only thinking about it, then letting it go. It seems significant considering the time and place and situation: well past two in the morning, in her bedroom, drinking and smoking and reading poetry to one another. She asks me if I want to smoke before I go. Marijuana. I tell her not tonight, not again. She sleeps with another man. I tell her good night and to sleep tight. When I get home, I am overcome with a moment of emptiness, utter loneliness; the natural progression of such things. It always eventually passes.

Aaron C. Molden

A Meditation on Mismatched Socks

    Promiscuity seems inevitable if you have a mind steeped in pathos and loneliness. Of course this loneliness is from our own excuses; anyone can find someone so long as they stop thinking about it and submit to the obvious banal reality that most of us are simply average. I write this still believing the contrary: I do not believe I am average. I do indeed believe I am unique, special, even exceptional.          
    Call it narcissism. Thus, promiscuity remains.
    When things fall into the right place at just the right time, day or night; when the right person chooses to, yes, engage and reciprocate: unchained sexual interaction. All of us can be clever and attractive as long as we remain at least partially social and self-aware beasts.
    Here's a disclaimer; an awkward, but important distinction: I'm not including rape in this thought process. Rape is a act outside of modern moral code despite what some awful person has argued. In its literal sense it is wrong. Of course information gets mucked up in translation, and this is why I'm scratching it out of the dialogue from the get go. Tragically it will always happen somewhere, but that is not what this is about.
    There are strange mementos which linger in my laundry. I have roughly twenty unmatched socks that drift between my hamper and my washer and dryer. They are all women's socks. They are all socks from women who have shared my bed -maybe once, maybe multiple times. They seem to be mementos for me, even if it is solely by mistake. I have kept them. I do not do anything unsettling with them, such as smell them from time to time, nor do a worship them pitifully as icons of female footdom; knowing these socks once sheathed these women's lower phalanges. I consider things such as this creepy, but apparently not creepy enough for me not to write about it.
    I keep them as one keeps old photographs.
    It's inexplicable because I never willfully seek out these items. I simply find them around my room when I decide to clean. They are strange symbols of fleeting happiness through sanitary, peticurial coincidence. They occupy my mind rarely, but surely.
    The women who have left these sleeves of foot cloth are all beautiful. This, to me, seems slightly misogynistic in a relatively unique way; no matter these women's shapes or sizes all of them are beautiful. They are complimented on the way they look on a regular basis. I seek this true beauty out, which is a very "artist" thing to do. I will provide examples: Edgar Degas, Egon Schiele, Gustav Klimt. Even the Catholic Church has artists such as Bernini or Botticelli.
    Ugly is an impossible thing to define, but I know it with all my senses. Everyone is capable of being ugly, so long as you spend enough time with them. Acceptance of that will help you realize how beautiful and true one can and can't be. I have learned this in part because of mismatched socks; socks to whose feet I can no longer distinguish... at least not by choice of color, pattern and wear-ability.

Song of Songs

Who with legs and mind upon her.
Who, with smile and laughter like his.
Who, with practical mechanics
and economics like theirs.
Who, with drugs and music in them.
Who, with a nude nature,
cloth-less to western civilization.
Who, with foreign accents,
who accepts a foreign grasp of hand.
Who, with plump cheeks
and toothy smile.
Who, with thighs that quiver,
with toes a-dancing; climaxing.
Who, with pale blue eyes,
with freckled cheeks,
with crooked teeth,
with lazy eye,
with basketball limbs,
with political thoughts,
with strong opinions,
with bookish desires,
with irrational thoughts
and logical logistics in mind.
Who, with lovely nipples
dressed upon small or ample breasts.
Who, with toes he cherishes,
and a head he adores.
Who, with an ass he cannot help but look at.
Who, with hair he runs his fingers through.
Who, with a figue he could study forever,
its features gradually changing over time.
Who, with beautiful speaking voice
and something to speak of;
with rapturous singing voice
and something to sing about.
Who, with soft navel
upon which he may rest his head.
Who, with brooding mind and natural anxiety.
Who, with not necessarily god on their side,
but instead natural divinity and grace.
Who, who he cannot imagine living without:
who are you?

Aaron C. Molden

Mount Moran

I see Mount Moran everyday,
in the wrinkles of blankets
and the textures of ceilings.
I see that broad glacial,
and iron expanse
in the everyday shifting
of all that is banal in this world.
Moran is all the mundane movements
of this world multiplied into millions,
then formed into something unspeakable;
incredible; almost alien;
both beautiful and perilous.
I see it in my dreams reflected back
upon the waters of Jackson lake,
like some twin mountain
of an upside down underworld
not yet discover by us,
both consecraters and desecraters.
I see that mountain in grains of wood
and the writhing of a woman's hair
upon her bed sheets.
I see the foothills beside her ablaze
so beautiful in the moment,
both smoke and clouds fusing.
I see Mount Moran in my dreams.
I see her and want to see again.

Aaron C. Molden