"What the hell are you looking at?"--woman on subway. "Construction, however, becomes artistic--as opposed to the literal mathematical construction of purposeful forms--only when it fills itself with what is heterogeneous and irrational with respect to it--with the material, as it were; otherwise it would remain condemned to spin its wheels" --same woman on subway after given a stick of cinnamon gum. Then "Almost as an afterthought the winds beat their tension into your dream." --Charles Boer.

Such is the complexity of interactions. And if it's love, well, when you have to write a love letter and can't think of what to say, Hallmark is of no use. But there is an answer: love letters for those who don't have the time or motivation to do it themselves. Each letter is tailored for the customer--a genuine original. And knowing that trying to figure out what kind of love letter to send is another arduous task involving more time and motivation than the customer may possess, a list of general modes in which the letter can be written is provided, making the selection process easier. Once a mode has been decided on, simply send a handwriting sample, relevant addresses, a check for costs, and then it is time to sit back and wait for the fireworks. Here is a brief sample of some of the modes in which your love letter can be written.

POSSESSIVE
You are mine. Your auditory canal, concentric rings of inorganic matrix, anterior horn, motor end plates, cardiac muscle, voluntary movement, inner surface of your cheek, filtration, pancreatic ducts, suspensory ligament of ovary, tibia, fimbria of fornix, vagus nerve, dorsal white column, interscapular fat, middle phalanx, clavicle, intertubercular groove, inner ear fluids, diaphragm, globulins, metabolic wastes, lymphatic capillaries, dilation, keratin, dermis, hair erector muscle, tonsils, circulating scavenger cells, vein of Galen, ethmoid sinus, atrium, inferior olive, pons, bile pathway, left costal margin, sternum, pulp chamber, flexors, metacarpal nerve branches, and your eyes.

HYPERBOLIC
Meaning is peppermint candy dangerously meadow gathered. Feathers extending from decay with a Roman numeral in it. You sing and are in your own way, and like an abyss cover your ass with those you inspire. I like the little hairs on your arms. And on a larger scale, the planet's rotation, lords, gravity-shocked branches, waved, folded into bread hot at the table, excite me too. Consider airs. The hypnosis of having feet. Every feather a death-chill. On the atlas, on the hips. Operas and wines confusing each other. And we know it's all mixed up by a complexity that gets away from us, though we're allowed to hang things on it and try and leave it at that. But what we target for sentimentality has its own agenda. A creek runs off with a deer skull. Tired on his ass an ape lets out a little friendly piss. As though paradise. And I want paradise, not heaven. Devotion in the Roaring Twenties had wiggle. A tough little tush. Instead of breadcrumbs, pigeons were fed champagne bubbles. Instead of grammar, children were taught how to put on make-up and play pianos. And sexually transmitted diseases were hilarious, racing around in your crotch like the Marx Brothers. We can bring all of that back! If you want evidence of my love I'll write you an entire book of such letters. Creation is simple. Tolstoy dipped the point of his beard into an inkwell and wrote Anna Karenina. He then redipped it and wrote War and Peace. We'll be inseparable. Folded married grins. If a line were drawn from your eye to each star: Vega Nekkar Mirzam Shedar Cursa Bootis Polaris Cage Ford Thurman Mira Monroe Loren Kilmer Mirach Chara Nashira Mya Acamar Geminorum Tauri Capella Wezen Canopus Rastaban Pegasi Spacey Gershon Dinero Lange Affleck Prince Firth Draconis Zosma. My love! What is it you feel about me? When do we get to go fishing in the gigantic blood?

REQUEST
I love you but will you please let us do it and stop believing that our not doing it builds a "tension" that is a magic defended by rasps with dependent threats mixing with fat and muses and hugeness unattached inside a will to live inside lucks of rum developing the excitement of a moment which will split open and grow into an imaginary kingdom.

TO A CITY:
Seeing myself in the glass of your buildings I know you love me using so many reflectors to catch as much of me as you can moment to moment, and I love you to. Wherever you are physically decayed I make a note, which I turn into a letter, which I send to the Mayor demanding that he attend to the wound. Like that scenerio where the guy wakes up and he's the only one left walking through an empty city. I wish that would happen to us. There's too many people to share you with. How many of them know that little spot in your park right there, the meaningful affiliation of exactly those seven hundred and twenty-two blades of grass? How many pause to kneel down to touch a piece of your common gravel? At least we are alone in my/your apartment. Here between your walls breathing your air standing on the floor (which I know is your hand) we finally get some privacy. And though you have millions of hands holding millions of others, and many lights besides and various directions--still, when I'm in bed with my eyes closed, listening to the sound of your variations, I know we have an understanding.

PRACTICAL WITH A RECIPE
I can take care of your needs. If you're sad, I'll leave you to yourself. If you need to wake up, I'll slap your face. And if you're hungry, Pure Swiss Infant Soup is a smart, delicious way to start a meal. It takes the edge off your appetite and helps you feel full. To make this soup, first capture a pure Swiss infant. To inhibit unwanted noise, a dab of chloroform applied to the nostrils will do. Next, place slumbering pure Swiss infant on a clean chopping board. Using a sharp knife, separate head from torso. Drain blood from torso into a large pot. Add two sticks of butter, four tablespoons of salt, a fourth cup of cilantro, and one finely chopped onion. While blood is cooking, carefully split the cranium in half and remove the brain. Wash brain with cold water and then cut in half. Place brain halves in boiling blood, let cook on high for three minutes, and then turn heat down to simmer. Cover pot with lid. Now take your cranium halves and wash them vigorously with soap and warm water. When clean, place each cranium half on a plate. After soup has cooked for thirty minutes, turn off heat and let soup cool to room temperature. Remove brain halves from soup and place one in each cranium-bowl. Pour soup over brains and enjoy!

Per serving:
Calories: 35
Sodium: 315 mg
Cholesterol: 42

CREEPY
The other day when we were talking--there was this quality in your voice--this really sweet little erotic thing in your voice--a tone I can't explain it I'm not an audiologist--but it was like you were feeling something and trying to hide it--restraining something in your voice--and so there was this tiny little quirk in your voice--I was listing to your voice and it was intense--I feel like you--get me--even though I know we've only met once and we were just as they say "shooting the breeze"--but your voice--as we talked--just this ever so tiny slight leak of excitement your throat muscles were struggling to sound regular--but I could feel it--scientific instruments can't feel everything--I could feel--I feel--could we meet again?

CONFIDENT
I am a god of the heaven that exists in applause. I am a mission, a mansion, a mint * a million. I will not compare myself to the big bang because I can generate so much more. I am a structure that apples and symphonies grow in as incidentals. I am Kant without the bullshit. If I put my hands on your head you would automatically not survive. And, besides, consequently, but, or, because, either, but also, hence, for, moreover, not only, or, neither, and, who, however, which, both, that, although, since, therefore, if, as if, though, several, those, nor, to put it another way, that, likewise, once again, to repeat, in fact, by comparison, rather than, yet, next, while, now, soon, after so much time, at first, during, earlier, beyond, of course, naturally, lots of, the, more, each, few, or rather, what an, any, the, these, and, be, or as opposed to, is another, past, upon. My presence inspires awe, and one of awe's essential ingredients is fear, which means that it is safe to say you are currently in the process of crying in fright reading this letter. But though you may feel embarrassed, perhaps even ashamed to have a face of tears and snot while no doubt the greatest man to ever walk earth talks in paragraphs of heightened human language--resolving old abysses and starting new ones--do not run. Come to my house now with the smell of this without your clothes on.

IMPATIENT
My love. Death goes too far. As do crooners. Air's territory. And conjunctions. The germs in forests and De Palma. Nature racks. Apples are not our companions. And years have no case to make no hand in our funerals, our turning up anywhere. Sun awful it all. Inspiration feels like girls being murdered on your lap by other girls in a battle for the frosting on your lips. And I want you. Some want a holding silence height carries. Then need and a proper look, screwoffs necking ladders, winter on its own, a crowbar bounced off a forehead, that's love! and says you shouldn't want a wing unless it's of a mansion big enough to hold Beethoven's output and still have room for more bodies. Eyes sharpened up in jail say as much, as does any chair in splinters. So don't screw around. Trombones agree. Stetson hats argue for it, as does humidity's contribution to seminude street life and my hand waving at you from a taxi because time is death making sure of itself, and being able to move toward someone you want day or night in a taxi controlled by a man with concerns of his own is one of the reasons modern civilization is so exciting, the sun sucked in and perspired out of its soot happiness leg-fat.

REPETITIVE
Inside of love: Drinking carries suspension and minute points of gold throughout its height, and the transformations of innocents shrinking in momentums attached by neutral colors look as if named. Inside of love: At the starts of eyes at a slidden bit to prance beard nodding for ices we're way in a word now up to no one lean forward and breathe a situation of fingers. Inside of love: Electricity was invented so we could drop the candles and the lords they carried and dance all night long in American blue jeans inventing hips to die for. Then more darkness was invented so Jerry Lee Lewis could sing in it, and all asses shook, even the bottom of the sea. Inside of love: Bases of melt have burrowed, friable rock, and effects, so the nurses get around, summits traveling faster (a group presumably) to the choice, well-timed bones in the hand and foot, cloud not to be done, late in life, flutter or wow, nearness put forward based on the area of a space regarded as filled with matter for burial. Inside of love: If you have just now no Al Green joining himself in his own throat for love stand in a door if you think that way in a dialect good at light without a hat the quick hands of Chinese poetry like land looks delicious in a movie I don't know why I don't run this kingdom I just ride in cars and look at the figures that turn the gravity in one's stomach into a joke starring the mean streaks of movement that make blood build up in a comic book that's lost its mind in the faces of girls. Inside of love: In a dance palace Moonriver the heart of the world biting back in the slowest of slow can I see you again? Inside of love: Buy me a coke. Give movement locked in mixing a pout to flunk lights. Strengthen your hands. Bury idols in their own bottom lips. Buy me a watch. Inside of love: Moods in the borrowing startle. Tilt slit looming. See and believe. Rot into more chess. Hearing dives away roots. Inside of love: I am progressing from magnetite-bearing serpentinized ultramafic rock to fayalite bearing granites, from hematite bearing ores to jarosite, not to mention from oxygen depleted ground water to an O2-bearing vadose zone. Inside of love: Staggering has apples. Secrecy turns a hair. Through underbelieved paleness a hand makes legal circles. Crossed-out sound absorbed into a curve remembered. Inside of love: Detail after detail energy conversions black quick unthinkable in the pressure of things on earth I am a man with candy! I am a man with candy!

Marc Baez lives and writes in Chicago.

TALKING TO STRANGERS

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