Not All For Love: A Book of Poetry Page 4
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,
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