Seek

A lonely man admired for his quiet temperament

lashes out at the keyboard, aggressively 

ignoring what he knows to be early morning,

hopeful even when blue sky-flowers bloom

while he scratches purpling eyelids

and journeys through Internet forums, 

advice blogs, waiting for replies to echo

like calls across a harbor,

like tired people walking down 

long, creaky hallways, their essences, 

their hopes reverberating

within other dark apartments,

against other gray faces, against screens.

Finding only empty pages, he sweats,

kicks his heart into a blind run

and posts his face across dating websites,

adjusting his personal truths, and forcing 

a smile to behold a camera flash. 

Deftly he Photoshops 

pudgy cheeks, the hair inside his nose

and the sleeplessness beneath his eyes.

Waits, the mouse clutched meekly,

clicking "reload" again and again.

Sunrise: a modem winks like a distant ship.

He is asleep at the desk, forgetful

of an e-mail address with curly brown hair

and large hips longing for the perfect companion,

his struggle to speak to her through an endless poem

of "I will love you" and "I could love you"

and a few mistakenly misleading images

that died blank-faced, a white room

abandoned in the frames of his glasses.