Twenty Three

Lost Poems and Forgotten Memories

Naked Beauty

“I want to do things so wild with you that I don't know how to say them.”

~ Anais Nin

“…suddenly, scaldingly, holdingly, all nowhere gone and time absolutely still and they were both there, time having stopped and he felt the earth move out and away from them.”

~ Ernest Hemingway, For Whom The Bell Tolls

You...you...you...

My drug

My addiction

My ceaseless urge…my fix

Needle under my skin

Cold chill of desire

Pill in my mouth

Shot of sweet intoxication

Opiate

Into lungs erasing reality

Momentary suspension of existence

Floating into ethereal hibernation

Over your body

In your arms

Smoke induced otherness

Incense filling nostrils

Inhabiting senses

Between sheets soaked in desire

Mutilated with passion

Darkness envelops us

You…the only light

Passage back to life – release - trembling compulsion

Breath

A faint heart beat

Only...only...only

The night between us

Candles flicker

Moonlight casting shadows

On naked beauty
Poetry spun from want

A Touch of A Hand...

Some Things You Should Never Get Over...

Paradise Lost

How you looked that day

In a bikini

Ocean and Palm trees behind you

How you tasted

When I kissed you

When we moved between night and day

From the beach to the bed

Barefoot and naked

Under the moon and the sheets

I liked you that day

And loved you that night

When our bodies moved with the tide of passion

The breeze drying us through open windows

Calming from the frisson

Sweet smell of sex lingering in the air 
On my tongue and in your hair

That Year

He took lovers that year

Like brilliant novels

Reading part way through

Without finishing 

Before starting with the next

He wanted nothing 

But a new page to turn

Until he forgot what he was reading

Songs and Memories

In his bed half sleeping and barely, briefly feeling something again for a moment. A scene from a novel. A script playing on the stage of his memory. Words and light fusing into a moment, "...all parts of the body must be ready for the other, all atoms must jump in one direction for desire to occur” spoke the English Patient long ago. 

He remembers uttering other words. When he felt something. When he risked being alive. When he was not afraid of living. 

When he said on a September night, 

I hear

"For Emily Wherever I May..."

And you are

Singing me to sleep

Bidding me to dream

Of, "... you warm and near..."

Sweetness of your voice

Poetical cadence of words

I feel your breath

As you whisper

"Oh, what a dream I had..."

Our eyes meet with a glance

I feel your fingertips touch my soul

I taste the softness of your lips

Your hand was in mine

"...we walked on frosted fields of juniper and lamplight..."

And when she was still alive. When he could still hear her voice. When she risked leaving her demons behind. 

She replied in a whisper, “continue please” with a smile and music in her eyes.

He said, “I found you warm and near.”

She moaned, “I kissed your honey hair with my grateful tears.”

Quickly and softly speaking she said, “I’ll finish…oh I love you…”

He gets out of his bed and makes a drink. He walks into the dark room of his existence and sits down to taste the gin and the lime and the coldness of the ice swirling with the tonic. Yesterday was different he thinks. More words come in the night like they always do. Warm comfort of solidarity in old words of the Baird,  

“She should have died hereafter;  

There would have been a time for such a word.  

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,  

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day 

To the last syllable of recorded time,

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools 

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! 

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player 

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage 

And then is heard no more: it is a tale  

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, 

Signifying nothing.”

Mother's Day 2015

This Mother’s Day

Dislocated by time and circumstance

Lost in space and feeling

Undone by life

Smiling and laughter distilled by heartache

Yet three births

Tears of joy as eyes meet eyes

Speaking to the questions of new life

Wonder in the possibilities we held

Sustained at your breast

Moments moved and shifted

Hours elapsing as we blinked and years evaporated

Into mists of dream filled days caring and giving

Giving all you were and are

To three flowers of your delight

Smiling on faces of promise

Tenderness released and shared

By you

The mother of my children

No distraction enough

To forget the forever memories

I still love

Love In Church

I want to hear

This in a church

A plaintive honest plea for God

Mary Magdalene singing for life

To be known and to know

Asking questions

Any question

No line between sacred and profane

Not penal substitution dispensationalist laced lyrics

Not the same worn out evangelical story

Not hearing I’m not good enough

Even saying, “I believe” is a work

Everyone is beautiful

The imago dei

Not an altar call

I want the better story

The original story

The story that got a man killed by the Empire

Not sitting in a sanctuary with the Empire’s flag

The resurrection

Not floating on heaven’s cloud

Making everything new

Not escaping from earth

But restoring our home 

Not leaving for an illusionary one

A bright shining epistemology 

Hermeneutics of possibility 

Encounters of experience in the spaces

Beyond our borders

Breaking bread 

Drinking wine
Dancing to the music of life

Love ~ Relationships & Sunken Ships

The weather turnend

on

the night we ended

a memory lost beneath the sea

forgotten and insignificant

until

remembered by historians of love

asking why

always why

we never ask the questions

while we make love

only when it’s over

as the archeologists excavate our bed

looking for clues to why we left

our harbor

into the November storm that broke us

made us two from one

as the chilling rains fell

while the sleet froze on our naked bodies

as we felt the waves of dereliction

while the lights went out

on

love

relationships

and

sunken ships

 

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