Not All For Love: A Book of Poetry Read online

release.

  After, as we

  lay atop one another,

  a storm of

  disjointed, confusing

  thoughts swirl about; I

  gently push her aside

  taking care not to wake her,

  and I rise from our bed,

  sitting up with my legs dangling

  off the side, tips of my toes

  a hair’s width from the floor.

  An ocean’s breeze

  floats in through our

  room’s open window,

  the curtains wafting

  in the pale moonlight

  looking like an ghostly

  visage. The moment

  runs a chill the length

  of my spine, from a

  spot at the small of my

  back and reaching

  the base of my neck

  before turning inward,

  burying itself in my

  throat. A hand on my

  shoulder, her hand. I’m

  reassured. I’m freed. In the

  oppression of love, I

  find only freedom.

  18.

  An

  effort made

  for the sake

  of our love, I’m

  watching as she slips

  through my fingers,

  with her a last chance

  at happiness disappearing.

  An

  vast distance has

  come between us,

  the days dominated by

  an imagining, an

  fantasizing of her warmth,

  an recalling of the

  touch of her skin on mine. In

  passing, we meet, as if we are

  carrying out an illicit affair,

  her chest heaving, our bodies

  glistening with sweat. It’s

  a moment set in darkness,

  but as we lie atop one another

  a silence settles, broken

  only by the

  gentle rattling of the

  blinds against the half-open

  window. Love, I feel

  an devotion to her

  so intense it hurts, so

  painful it frightens me. I

  have to get away. I

  need to get away. But I

  can’t get away. If I

  try, if I push her off me and

  make for the door, we will

  always be together,

  we will never be apart,

  ours is a love

  that will pursue

  me for so long

  as I live, and she

  would to try and

  flee all the same

  would find herself

  pursued by a love

  boundless, infinite in

  feeling as would I. We

  share in our fate, in

  our consignment, our

  resignation in surrender to

  the harsh, cruel truths of the

  world we live in, of the world

  we’ve been made to believe we

  live in, an fictional creation.

  But it’s late, it’s always too

  late. In a tropical clime,

  balmy, humid, we

  lie in each other’s arms,

  as if to freeze the moment,

  to live in that narrow

  space between one heartbeat

  and the next.

  19.

  In

  memory of an

  blue flame burning

  crimson in the

  lamentations of a

  rude, half-sized shade,

  she has written in

  words so unlike hers,

  but for the elegant

  swirls fraudulently

  eviscerating the pages

  flipping in my mind. It’s

  not yet time, but the

  refund on our nightmares

  has been withheld by someone

  too calm in mourning to trust.

  After we’ve been apart,

  the birds perched

  on her shoulders

  with strands of her

  hair in their beaks I

  take, I choose to take as

  proof I’m in a place I

  shouldn’t have come. It’s

  an full-scale joke,

  obscene,

  exaggerated,

  pornographic

  in its

  contempt for

  subtlety,

  nuance,

  grace. We

  live in the moment,

  in that narrow space between

  one moment and the next,

  a silver feather like

  an impossible dream,

  until we are no longer together,

  but I dreaming of her and

  she, surely, dreaming of me,

  the full-scale joke

  on us, this time,

  on us, as it’s always been,

  in her a salvation from the

  unbearable hopelessness

  pervading every breath

  we draw in

  and every breath

  we push out. In love,

  in making love we

  become something other than

  what we are, turning the

  full-scale joke on itself,

  at least for now.

  20.

  Here

  the psyche

  celebrates as the

  victor, bolstered

  by the promise of an

  unsolved riddle. It’s

  in hers, in the way the

  splendorous warmth of

  her hair scattering

  the setting sun’s light

  that survives true

  beauty, not by some

  vendor’s last urging,

  nor the carcass of an unshelved,

  smokeproof cockpit,

  locking on the sound

  of her voice as if it

  were a

  physical thing,

  appearing from memory

  like a monster in the mist.

  We are carefree,

  taking the chance at

  true love

  without concern for

  largess; she’s tired,

  now, tired of

  answering for me, of

  explaining about me, of

  looking for an excuse to

  keep going, of

  looking for an excuse to

  stop. Neutral,

  neutrality is the enemy

  of our love, if

  needful of our future

  and if

  mindful of our past,

  we may still yet win the day.

  Our love has become

  like the wind,

  scattering our senses,

  an even keel

  impossible; but I crave this feeling.

  In the afterwards of

  our having made love

  we nearly convince

  ourselves we can

  still be as we were.

  This, then, is the

  hidden largess we are

  allowed by the psyche,

  lensed behind the memories

  of ourselves as in love,

  united as though we were one.

  Addendum.

  All this talk of

  things like ‘largess’

  and a ‘full-scale joke’ shouldn’t

  take from the essence of it all;

  I’m in love, and she is, too.

  21.

  It’s dark,

  too dark,

  without light the

  darkness seeming to

  taunt us. There’s something

  seductive in its taunts,

  as though behind there

  lies a promise, the promise

  of something more.

  But the knowledge

  can’t but survive,
r />   a knowledge of where

  we’ve been. I’m in love with

  her, she’s the love of my life.

  An darkened

  room fades to black,

  an orange glow

  radiates from a

  central point, from a

  place somewhere between

  nothing and all.

  It’s been so

  long since

  we’ve held

  each other,

  since we’ve,

  despite our

  weaknesses,

  despite our

  frailty, and

  with dawn ascending

  slowly over the horizon,

  we may avenge the night

  through the coming day,

  living vicariously through its light.

  As dawn breaks,

  its light reaches

  across the bed I share with her;

  her bosom casts shadows

  like mountains’ peaks,

  and her hair rustles

  gently as she turns. It’s

  surreal, unreal,

  a phantom moment

  to make the

  dagger’s blade

  cut through us cleanly.

  In love, I am like the

  wind, prone to unpredictable

  gusts of strength,

  pushing me to an

  endless parade of humiliation

  interspersed with

  random acts of insanity;

  but I wouldn’t have it

  any other way. If only

  time would allow, I might

  turn back the clock

  and link through a pattern

  of black dots to find

  ourselves again.

  22.

  It says

  something about

  the spirit of

  volunteering when

  historical orders view

  themselves through the lens of

  our present passions.

  (Or dispassions,

  as the case may be).

  In love, I forget

  myself. In enmity, the

  sudden realization of

  myself, of the things I’ve

  said and of the things I’ve

  done strikes in full force,

  seeming to emerge

  suddenly like a black

  mass looming from behind

  a thick fog. Here,

  dearly, in a perfect

  missionary of peace and love,

  we are so very unreasonable,

  so unmoved, her health

  and her success

  contrasting against

  my sickness

  and my failure.

  But it’s nearly dark,

  for even such a night

  as this, it may soon

  be my time to quit. She

  had felt my arms not

  for the milder of cases

  yielding in ten days,

  perhaps two weeks, her

  suddenly desirous

  character knowing,

  looming large by my

  untimely demise. We

  are as one. With an

  whimsical seriousness

  a last chance

  presents itself,

  her arms finding

  the small of

  my back. Among

  them, I sense the

  desirous

  agitation of

  she who would

  seek to

  overthrow the

  world at large. And

  I surrender at her touch.

  23.

  As they are

  losing their septuplets

  we look for the first

  sign of a smiling snap.

  As we are

  made into

  sophisticated tools,

  manipulated for the benefit

  of something greater

  than ourselves, we

  lose the weariness, the

  uneasiness of our own

  mocking perfection.

  Alien, we are as

  they who would slash

  across the sky, thin,

  ghostly visages, grim

  parodies, humourless, yet

  surreal. In love,

  in love, in love, in love,

  an obsession with self-parody

  we become. But it’s not

  too late. It’s almost too late.

  But we’re not quite there yet.

  The ascetic virtues can be

  enlightening. The love of

  our lives can extend outward,

  encompassing all,

  but so, too, can it

  withdraw inward,

  looking only at the self.

  In her arms, I have found

  favour, on the previous day

  favour’s fortune finding

  fame for future’s frame,

  a

  troop transport training

  after one last naked truth

  lingering lovingly on the

  precipice of despair.

  Actually, according to the

  rules that govern this sort of thing,

  the fire of our love should’ve

  cooled, by now, to a charred,

  still-smoldering embers; but

  why, then, am I

  consumed in an

  uncontrollable inferno? The

  search for her phase, for

  the character she’s become

  in the banality of systematic

  theft, is a search I’ve

  come to realize.

  Three men walk

  along a railroad’s tracks,

  weeds sprouting

  between the rails, the

  trains long ago stopped,

  rails left to rot while

  men look back on what

  used to be. Love, love, love.

  Love, I love her, as I’ve

  always loved her, as I’ll always

  love her. It’s a

  piece of small passport

  for the non-drowsy sales

  centre, losing our minds

  all the while.

  24.

  The

  idea of

  our anti-love

  seems preposterous,

  arrogant, condescending,

  self-righteous and self-important.

  An

  crushing

  realization that I’ve

  frightened myself

  into believing

  we’re more

  than we are.

  Windchimes chime

  in the early evening’s

  breeze, her name

  almost-hides behind the

  chiming of the windchime’s chimes.

  An love for the

  pages of memory to

  hide like a well-kept

  secret deep in the last