Pain

I am in love

With a beautiful

Faithful woman

Her name is Pain

And she is mine

 

Chapter 2

fleeting moments of happiness

in a sea of meaning

never really all the way out of the melancholy

finding some comfort together

while swimming in it

confidence in the story

in another chapter

he will kiss her

and she will kiss him back

Confessions

 

He was drinking wine in his apartment with her. Music playing in the background as the last of the October light was fading, as was the wine in the bottle. Each of them in their separate chairs, just as their lives up to now had been. They were sitting in silence without awkwardness and talking without pretense. Time flowed as it does when two people are comfortable with each other and content with themselves. He wondered what she thought about him. His life, his oddities, his predilections, how he spoke, what he wrote about, how he looked, and if his poetry moved her soul. He thought she must know how much he liked her, how he craved her company.

Since he was a child he had difficulty expressing in spoken words how he felt. So much he kept inside of himself, in his head. The feelings unable to find a way out of his mouth. Is this why his marriage crumbled, why he saw women he liked disappear with other men? He felt deeply and truly about so much but could not say it when the he needed to. Maybe, that is why he started writing - it would be the salvation of his inner world. The way to tell those he cared about what he feels.

He turned his stare towards where she was curled up in the Papasan chair holding a half empty glass of Chianti. He imagined she was dreaming of visiting Italy with him someday and how she would smile - how her eyes would be excited with the ancient ruins of Rome and the beauty of the sights and smells of the Mediterranean. He wanted to tell her everything. He wanted to reach out across the space between them and hold her hand. He wanted to touch her and look into her eyes as he gently moved his face to hers and softly kiss her lips.

He desired all this but was afraid. Afraid he would scare her off and loose the friend he had. But he wanted her. His mind spiraled off again into the infernal questioning of himself: would he regret never touching his lips to hers? What is life without risking for the sake of making it beautiful? He thought if she knew what he was thinking she would say, "just kiss me you idiot, I will kiss you back."

Part of him really believed she would kiss him back. Part of him wanted to believe that and trust that and still all he really wanted was not the kiss but to trust someone again with his whole being. Really trust with all that he is. That is why he initially had turned to her. He wanted to ask her, "how do you trust someone, how do you really know what you give to someone is safe?" The words of a a Springsteen song floated into his mind, he knew if he quoted them to her he would receive a disparaging look with a smile and if she was feeling generous a snarky comment as she so loved Springsteen. But the lyrics were true and the song played on a cassette tape in his mind,

"On his right hand Billy’d tattooed the word love and on his left hand was the word fear ~ And in which hand he held his fate was never clear..."

He didn't quote the lyrics to her. He didn't ask her how do you trust someone. He didn't reach for her hand. He didn't kiss her. He blamed the final ray of sunshine dancing on her hair which distracted him. Or was it her beauty and kindness which overtook his senses and will to speak and act. He just looked at her, all of her and loved that she was sharing the same space with him, the same seconds of life.

So they sat in their separate chairs and drank the wine while the music played and the sun sank in the west. And, the being together was enough and made him feel whole.

 

Canvas

Depth of penetration

Light into darkness

Creating inside a body

An ache longing for liberation

Behind the eyes of imagination

Passions delicately seep

Dripping like morning dew

To the blank page from infinitude

Recapitulation of time and meaning

Layered interpretation without context

Fragments of truth and reality in an aesthetic captured betwixt being and non being

Life writ large on the canvas of the artists mind

Anticipating humanity stepping into the experience

She dances with color and exposes our nakedness

Incredulity at her brushstrokes

Fragility in finitude

Exposed breathless beauty in darkened skin

Lips touch lips

Life’s first kiss

Breath and eyes open to see love

She is all in all and her brush is set down

Resting to let her creation be

Light flickering as the image dances

The first shadows of reflection fall

Art is life

Creativity is being

She is becoming

Love Goes On

Life touches death

Beauty smiles on the disfigured

Art lives beyond the sacred or profane

Eyes weep with eyes

We embrace in triumph and defeat

Love goes on

 

The Remembrance of the Lost

"I made a garland for her head,

And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;

She looked at me as she did love,

And made sweet moan."

~ Keats, from La Belle Dame Sans Merci

Tonight I sit

Tonight I moan

Tonight I wish

you were on the phone

Remembering the cost of concupiscence

Not as we recollect

But how we wish it was

in love

with the idea of you

the scent of affection

what could be and once was

The remembrance of the lost

Conspires against and with my heart

 

 

 

Questions In Paradise

"'How are you? You old love-house of always.'

'I'm the same.'

'Really the same?'

'The same as one always is. I'm yours in this town.'

'Until the plane leaves.'

'Exactly,' she said and changed her position for the better in the car. 'Look,' she said. 'We've left the shining part and it's dirty and smoky. When didn't we do that?'

'Sometimes.'

'Yes,' she said. 'Sometimes.'

Then they looked at the dirty and the smoky and her quick eyes and lovely intellengence saw everything instantly that had taken him so many years to see.

'Now it gets better,' she said. She had never told him a lie in his life and he had tried to never lie to her. But he had been quite unsuccessful.

'Do you still love me?' She asked. 'Tell me true without adornments.'

'Yes. You ought to know.'

'I know,' she said, holding him to prove it if it could prove it.

'Who is the man now?'

'Let's not talk about him. You wouldn't care for him.'

'Maybe not,' he said and held her so close that it was as though something must break if both were truly serious. It was their old game and she broke and the break was clean."

~ Ernest Heminingway, Islands In The Stream

 

One Question

I have one question to ask you. One question searching for an answer before the morning light. The question is for the only one I whispered these words to so many lost years ago, "I think I'm falling in love with you."

Are you happy?

Three Poems For A Sunday Morning

"Crying does not indicate that you are weak. Since birth, it has always been a sign that you are alive."

~ Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

Touch my body

exorcise the demons

I am bleeding without a wound

hold me and be my tourniquet

~~~~~~~

Intuition is a clever bitch

Whispering truth above the decibels of lies

So pretend all you are not

She will grab my hand

And walk me to the light

 

~~~~~~~

We exchange each other

In the most meaningless of ways

Forgetting we are human

 

(Not lifeless pieces on a chess board)

 

Without hearts

Without history

Without eyes

I Want To

I want to touch you

I want to be touched by you

I want to melt the ice around your heart

I want to light a candle inside the darkness of your soul

I want us to wake up from the loneliness together

Wrapped in each other's arms

Sunshine dancing on our bodies

While the spring breeze moves through the room

Coffee and conversation

Without pretense or hesitation in our silences

 

Spaces

Tearing at the fabric of our being

We slip into the ambiguity of dispair

Space between us

Spaces

(always)

Spaces

 

You and I

Everything about us was true. All we went through was real and honest. Our time together is what life is - the full spectrum of emotions and experiences. No other people in relationships had it better or easier, no others were more or less in love.

Any one who says that or pretends that are liars - to themselves and to each other. No relationship is ideal or without difficulties because two people are mysteries to each other and themselves - it is in the discovery of oneself and each other that we become who we can be together.

We faltered and got lost and were not able to find our way back to each other. In the fog of resentments and disappointments and the passing of time we changed as does everyone. I am sorry for my disorientation, my inability to communicate, my failure at loving in ways you needed to be loved. I miss and love you still. I don't believe that will ever go away.

Pieces

 

We exchange one another

In the most meaningless of ways

Forgetting we are human beings

Not lifeless pieces on a chess board

Without hearts

Without history