I was wondering all day today what to post up here. I thought of writing a new poem, but the semi maudlin (yet sober) nostalgic and stressed out situation I’m in this week will only lend itself to lines such as “Oh, Love, if you only knew” and “This deep pit of despair, oh world how I detest you” type sentences so I best shut it.
Then I thought, dig deep into the poetry vaults in the recess of the laptop and find something you havent published yet. I am lazy and not super excited at prospect. I may just decide to do so at the end of this so not poetic blog. Wait, it will get better I promise.
Then, out of the purple horizon of this ether, an email arrives that has a wonderful little quote, from Kierkegaard’s diary. I decided thatthey would be the words I share today. I apologize for mine being so dry, exuberance of emotion is very much under control and I am as tight lipped as an old prune.
Here it is:
“Oh, can I really believe the poet’s tales, that when one first sees the object of one’s love, one imagines one has seen her long ago, that all love, like all knowledge, is remembrance, that love too has its prophecies in the individual. … it seems to me that I should have to possess the beauty of all girls in order to draw out a beauty equal to yours; that I should have to circumnavigate the world in order to find the place I lack and which the deepest mystery of my whole being points towards, and at the next moment you are so near to me, filling my spirit so powerfully that I am transfigured for myself, and feel that it’s good to be here….Will I find what I am seeking here in this world, will I experience the conclusion of all my life’s eccentric premises, will I fold you in my arms…Have you gone on ahead, you, my longing, transfigured, do you beckon to me from another world? O, I will throw everything away in order to become light enough to follow you.”
Ok, now I will look for an old poem for you, anonymous folks.
Fine, here is one to combat the listlessness of this post. And to further comment on the beauty and longing in the above excerpt. Thank you for sending it to me, you know who you are.
Fantasy
27/8/2010
Arizona
You sleep in lands molten
and I shiver
and I shiver
all through numb tips and heat receding
ebbing
little strokes of your body invade these spaces mountains deserts airplanes and skyscrapers
dinners cocktails bedrooms and pillows and hot showers
and smoke and drink and dance and laughter
and walks
and transvestites
and Brooklyn
and my luminous sister
and talks
such colored buildings my eyes painted a prism
and good good friends
and embarrassment
kisses
and gold and silver and full moons over the hidden lake
trees that wail stories
ocean beachfronts and their freaks,
two headed turtles and my butterfly garden in a city of angels,
these flat expanses of my torso
whistled melodies in spicy fumes
vapor braided into my curls that sing
of this southern border I slam my heart into
these red orange heights speaking of some sort of god
or goddess
we don’t believe in
copper valleys all around me,
and we don’t love each other
and you sleep,
so far so far away from this altar
layers of fire in my footsteps
I remember
there are brown moments as pregnant as soil
there is your form entwined with my shattered expanses, a frenzy
of motion in an embrace,
simple,
and there have been arms
playful
strong
encircled a wanton tree in my waist,
tresses a vine of incense to haunt you,
noisy private chatter till we bubbled into each other, more
more than that
there were pauses
a whiff of silence in the dark,
I may still shine in little corners of your bedtime, your nights
mystery, a maze, a tangle
of absence in mornings
when I don’t want to think of you
rising in time zones of languages different
and we don’t speak the same words
any more
but
but your lips are still perfectly shaped
and smile sometimes
in sleep
and I,
I know
just where you are in lands molten,
a fragment of your dreams perhaps in my palm,
breath surrounds you
this violation of your reclined body, distant,
courses sin through my
mind,
I shiver
and
I shiver
and
I shiver
The Poeticians 