Light’s audacity continues to amaze me.
It stands still and stands for, senseless, mute,
immobile, resolute. Who could question passion’s
stills, desire’s shuttering, love’s stilling click?
Its baleful peer pierces moment’s shadow, exposes
my life within his spine’s juices, waves in his life
developing my fears and hopes. He envelops me
as I envelop him, deeps first, shallows last,
thermocline broken only at hunger’s fast subside.
I am in love with this girl who goes offering —
with this still life floating in troughs of tidepools spent.
Tag Archives: love
The Dark Room
sex before love
As we untangle I sweep spent chalk from your face,
smooth the dirt, lay again the white lines of our battlefield.
You had led off with speed, introduced power early on,
closed with pitching that overpowered me.Now, spent, I can pick the point at which we lost the game.
It was early on, third inning, two men on, my switch-
hitting third baseman striding confidently to the plate.
He had prevailed before, and over stiffer competition.You countered with a bullpen move. From wiley thumber
to pea shooter in the swift blink of a phone call.
And, like a couple who define their relationship through
the dynamics of power, failing to recognize the ebb and flowof interpersonal intercourse, not knowing that dominance
need not dictate course of action, so did we fail to understand
that when this time my good hitting overcame your good pitching,
it didn’t mean the game was over. There were still inningsto be played, home runs to be hit, errors to be made.
Unfortunate that our ballfield became bedroom,
our love-in-potential articulated through base need.
Now I can only wish that I had struck out.
The Knowing
there comes a moment
when,
unlike any other,
you know.
the words no longer mean,
the emotions dull and tired,
the pain, while heartfelt,
is only that.
there is no turning back,
only the senseless beating,
the dull, rhythmical pounding
of your head against stone.
here I lay,
dying,
every pore of my soul open,
and all she sees is her.
I can no longer try,
only
experience,
my neck a tangled
pop.
from “Envois” by Jacques Derrida
Disclaimer: the following is a passage that I adore
from a critical theory work by Jacques Derrida.
My only contribution is to arrange the lines for presentation.
You are my only double, I suppose, I speculate,
I postulate, in sum everything that sets
me on my march today, the entire postulate
of my practical reason, all my heart, and I speculate
on you, you are now the name,
yourself, or the title of everything
I do not understand. That I
never will be able to know, the other sideof myself, eternally inaccessible, not un-thinkable,
at all, but unknowable, unknown, — and so lovable.
As for you, my love, I can only postulate (for who else,
with whom would I have dreamed this?)
the immortality of the soul, liberty, the union of
virtue and happiness, and that one day you might love me.
Jacques Derrida on being photographed and being identified as an “author”
random musings
the rain falls; light blue kisses between previously enamored friends. umbrellas dot the landscape, visual whores clamoring for their bread. an indistinct whisper reveals a hint of lips, painted, a touch of chin, rouged, a thin swallow of neck half-hidden in textile folds. banshees exit, tear back-popping exhaust through wet lights -- no sirens yet. bent tree, crumbling brown- green, shivers pattering pain onto damp walkway.
Ache
The wind whistles through my moonlit branches. No longer do I feel your weight upon my limbs, Your nestled breath in my leaves, Your song in my roots. Your melody speaks to me from the echo of a different pith. My dreams sound the beat of another's heart, My hopes fall some other's leaves, My fruit ripens different desires. I will refuse this flower's bloom for the absence of you.
sex with you is absence
Your skin circles my breast as our breath flows
downhill. There remains naught but residue
from our coupling, bright browns and sterling greys,
raised squiggles of passion and bent depressions
of moisture. I have considered death before,
looked into its void, smelled its sour fear,
yet nothing but your thighs locked and loaded
can drag me beneath its spell. Because sex
with you is absence. It is loss, submission,
regression, withdrawal from the conscious and
immersion in the starred splendors of forked
nights, burnt portals and thrice-prong’d cries.
Alone I stand in a bed black as the sun,
your absence a shimmering wave of denial.
Letter to an Unknown Father
I
Light rises like steam from the bond between us.
So thick, so ample in girth is this rope
tying us together, bonding us at the hip,
we who stand separated by half a continent.
That corded hemp cuts through my skin.
I bleed green sap, the exoskeleton of my distance
rent from the force of your knot.
I was a grasshopper calmly feasting
on mites before the arachnid’s den,
I couldn’t know you lay in wait for me,
you who hid in your cave constructed
of dark-skinned intimidation, of hooded love.
Now, awakened, the twisted cord moans
and squeaks, the fibers contracting,
our coupling forced through its birth-canal.
Our love, mother, wife, holds us together, apart.
II
Cut short, green, like the rough
just off the fairway
of this championship course,
our cocks intertwine in the true
incarnation of patriarchal lineage.
This is a game of solitude,
striking the ball viciously
like a landowner slaps the serf,
but you, you are psychiatrist,
psychologist, therapist, pathologist.
Not enough to compete alone,
like a hurricane you lift up the sea,
throw it across the land, spill
your waterway over my bridge,
conquer your son’s confidence.
The serf hasn’t yet risen up,
scythe in hand, to disembowel the petty lord’s
pretense of power and privilege:
vanquished, I play eunuch, impotent
in order that his semen might remain.
III
Now your cough rattles my ears
like an earthquake drops glass.
How long shall the world
continue to shake for you
O mighty Zeus, spent from
the years of your youth?
Your phlegm reaches up,
grabs my throat,
chokes its way into my bowels.
I grew up in love with broken things,
displaced fear, misplaced love.
Your lungs wheeze loud,
my testicles ache,
unborn heirs clamoring.
Your cough shakes the foundation
of my mother’s description,
my brother’s failure, my own
flagellation. Tell me, father, how
shall we continue without the
definition that names us?
Tannin and Mocha
crinkled squints evaporate
in swirls of tannin and mocha:
roll, roll, squeeze
puff...
palabras eviscerate the air---
daggers blunt with passion. continue reading
Not That She
needs me to say yes. Quite the contrary. She already has hers. Twirling brown words flow through the pain of viscous brain. "Bury the dead for fear that they walk to the grave in labour." I remember the car. The street. The night. The words. "You're not acting like yourself." What's myself? Who is me? Why couldn't I have lived the life I was? Why couldn't I have told her the truth? That I was so deeply in love, so mesmerized by all that was her, that I could do no more than pray at her alter. Of course I acted different! Here was my Goddess, my kneeling honor.
alaintodd 