Poem: "Love and Sex"

BLOT: (14 Feb 2016 - 03:52:23 PM)

Poem: "Love and Sex"

When I first started writing this poem, "Love and Sex", my intention was merely to contrast love and passion with a car crash and confusion. However, as I kept going, I thought it might be interesting to try and tell a story. First read the poem, and then we'll get to the idea of what the story is.

"Love and Sex"

1. Afterword

The sound of wheels catching on asphalt screeches into
Headlights dying in crying crunching swerving and writing
The impact between one and the other (

The flowers on the table volumes speak
Of chances taken and dances spent
And the times when reaching was awakening
Too much towards understanding (

arms in hands, eyes in eyes, lips in
mouth and words taste kiss and writhe
in the dark spaces where fantasies
catch and note the passing of
heart beats and steam and
dreams like night pass why

)

) breaks against the aches and pains and the tumbling
Driving unknown strive stop and gasps of (

Where once was nothing is something, where
Once was was wanting is caring, where once
Was daring is now caution, and those are the
Things we do not talk about anymore, because when

) realization and lovemaking are simplicity as complex,
Every many single moment played out a symphony
Events constructed and/or conducted into the generally
downslope pantomime horns blaring and flashing where (

(etc) etc) etc. Exuent.

2. Fall

Wind paints water into sunlit waves and sighs spring forth from the seasons feeling the collapse in the marrow of their seems. Wood smoke and leaves crawl into memory as hours scream to proceed. Fire sparks up, a long wide heaven of hidden depths and wearing a coat of cold against warmth.

The pair wrap themselves in the silence found in many words. White noise and lines unspoken things run through the grass into the whispers of others nearby. Another day, another day. A gentle, soft rhyme of stuttering glances. Finally, loud in their not saying a word, hands look into hands and fingers talk upon fingers, and then the far away right there touches upon their shoulders.

Stars drop masks, wear bright faces into the sky. Charred wood smiles red. Sentences hope. Wind in the trees makes a sound like rainfall overhead. In the distance, the overfull river shudders into the shivering night.

3. Ending

Lips emerge from the rising smoke, her cigarette sculpts the concept of mouth and teeth, her nudity upon sheets begets the suggestion of a bed, and her laugh is the song of joyful regret. He, via stares, drinks in: the heart-shaped tattoo on the underside of her left breast, the color of her skin unlike but like his own, the way her hair paints the pillow, the way you can see her scent in the aftermath of sweat, the table between him and the bed clear glass and book laden. Sighing all the sounds but contentment, it was and it was not.

"We should not do this any more," she says.

Nothing, to this, he says.

"She will know, she has to know," she says.

"I know."

The blue of a midnight lightning strike, his eyes travel the room, head down into the cracks in the shadow of a corner. He has been here before, in principle if not in fact, and all journeys are like this, places that are merely recalculations of places been, the same sort of atoms redistributed into different names for the things that are the same difference of familiarity. Swallowing the remainder of tea, the temperature of breath, he looks into the window which is a mirror as the dark outside completes itself unerringly.

"My first love was a ghost," he says.

Nothing, to this, she says.

"She was a dream, moonlight upon window curtains," he says.

"She sounds lovely."

"I know."

Rising from the bed, she pulls his tie from a black pile on the floor, dresses in it. Loops around and back and down, wears it loosely upon the curvature of her chest, claims it in the moment of her perfume still lingering there upon her heat. Holding his empty cup, wondering what to do with it, he rubs the sticky sweetness upon its inner ceramic with his thumb.

"I have to go," she says.

Nothing, to this, he says.

"This will only get worse for us if I stay," she says.

"I know."

"I know you know."

5. Summer

Stones in a row along the broken beach,
Echoes of sunset twilight the red of dawn.
The man imagines he talks nothing not nonsense,
Smiles a painted caricature of lips and form.

Wind catches his hair, a woman his eyes,
Time flows down his back onto sand.
Waves, crashing, wash the stones into sea.
He turns, forgets himself, breathes sound. Again...

Inside his moment he distracts himself
From himself by a careful prod to distance.
The rain had poured for hours earlier,
But the sun has shown even more insistent.

Filled with ire of the passing flame, he calls
Out to his new love just found against the expanse.
She waltzes along the beach, he chases after,
Then stops when he realizes he is lost. Again...

He remembers that they will one day fuck,
His mind betrays the day she meets his wife.
He recalls the day she leaves, months from now,
He hopes one day they will have another life.

Her kiss upon his gasp, they fall into froth,
And all the salt breeze is but warmth in their hands.
Feeling knowing, forging new forms from clay,
They find the shape of each other. Shapes. Again...

7. Winter

There once was a thoughtful man named _______
Who ate pomegranate in all manner of ______,
The one quiet afternoon,
Feeling himself all swoon,
______ could not help to wonder why _______.

8. Prologue

the boy not yet a man walks bricks near asphalt
with all the buildings dwarfing him with glass and
doors and open moments of sounds emerging from
inside where they were born out of faces emulating
all the social graces such a group would effect

snow graces air and white graces ground and neither
sticks for very long an unseasonable flurry late in the
season decorates trees who took previous warm weeks
as a sign to start budding leaves that may or may not
survive the sudden change of temperatures

his steps trace out a broad diagonal of intention and pass
minutes into inefficiency while his mind wanders through
ponders and the small pond he passes rattles out fountain
noises and a small family of three small children play at
feeding the ducks but barely have bread to stretch

book in hand of a poet he barely has read but whose poems
he thumbs through and pretends at reading he quotes
a few lines incorrectly to the air as though anyone might
overhear him and mistake him for a passionate soul
who just happens to be uttering revelations

stopping at a bus stop he waits for the next one and
takes out his book and mumbles aloud as though anyone
would notice when a girl not yet a woman sits besides
and they exchange green glances and red smiles again
and again and he turns and says hello, my name is

Doug's Notes on "Love and Sex"

If you have to have the rough order that these take place in chronologically, it is 8, 2, 7, 5, 3, 1. There is no 4 or 6, but if you pay attention to the clues, they would be "Beginning" and "Spring". The story, as I imagine it (though I left gaps, so feel free to bring your own filling of them) is a man as a freshman at college meets a woman who is also a freshman, and they hit it off, but their relationship is plagued by a tendency to not be themselves and to use words as a barrier rather than a way to communicate themselves. He tries to redefine himself, and ends up meeting another woman who actually makes him happy, but knows it is doomed. At the end, shortly after breaking it off with his mistress, he dies in a car-crash and simultaneously remembers both relationships: the caring one that was passionless, and the passionate one that was careless.

The line "My first love was a ghost," was inspired by a weird fantasy I had as a very young fellow—likely 10 or 11—where I wondered what it would be like to meet and fall in love with a ghost. It is also to contrast the fact that his wife is a memory of a different time, the "ghost", while his lover is a hope for a future that cannot be, a "dream".

To some degree, this poem can also be seen as a companion piece to my recent poem, "In the Rain", though in that one the guy has come to terms with the end of his loveless marriage, while in this one the guy is more prone to continue failed relationships until they leave him.

Poetry

OTHER BLOTS THIS MONTH: February 2016