falling in love badly
the flames ache me, darling
dreams in this memorization, next to you
the lilac dries to shaded paperbits
the air tastes of river in the evening
turns stale with impermanence
you are the cure
the autumn vision
sandalwood in laces
with the cup tipped in the valley
maybe to hold me
maybe to know yourself
the flames chase your patience
with mine, always in error
so far no fatal coals
watching me from deep in
your eyes
It is truly disconcerting to look at these words and recognize the extent I was in love with someone I am now convinced was never in love with me. Of course I feel like a fool, but that is probably the true raison d'etre for love poems. To point out the way that your emotion manipulates your sense of what is true and real. I thought Becky Bradway loved me, at that time. And I had it bad for her, though I doubted her on and off and though she turned her desire for me on and off, like a spigot. I am trying to learn from these pieces.
dreams in this memorization, next to you
the lilac dries to shaded paperbits
the air tastes of river in the evening
turns stale with impermanence
you are the cure
the autumn vision
sandalwood in laces
with the cup tipped in the valley
maybe to hold me
maybe to know yourself
the flames chase your patience
with mine, always in error
so far no fatal coals
watching me from deep in
your eyes
It is truly disconcerting to look at these words and recognize the extent I was in love with someone I am now convinced was never in love with me. Of course I feel like a fool, but that is probably the true raison d'etre for love poems. To point out the way that your emotion manipulates your sense of what is true and real. I thought Becky Bradway loved me, at that time. And I had it bad for her, though I doubted her on and off and though she turned her desire for me on and off, like a spigot. I am trying to learn from these pieces.
Labels: Becky Bradway
posted by As Bjorn at 8:10 PM
2 Comments:
your love poems never seem to be the joyous celebration might one associate with the stereotype -- there's always this foreboding sense about them, like the lilac that crumbles into paper bits might as well be the very emotion of love itself.
it seems to me as though you have had some very tumultuous love affairs.
that said, i'd love to see anything you've written about kim (and have you written anything about either of your daughters?). the profundity of your wording seems to clash with this wavering feeling you're trying to express in this poem. and, i think it's easy to analyze something so fleeting and faltering as the relationship tackled here seems to have been -- it might be a good challenge to tackle more permanent feelings of love -- ones that perhaps have something to do with passion, but aren't completely based on that, you know? from your poems, i glean that woman have taught you a lot about anger and suffering and sadness, but i haven't seen a lot of bright praise, which is too bad -- since you have some extremely marvelous women in your life now. poetry about them would be perfect to offset these darker ones; something you could even consider making into a collection!
I appreciate the comments. I will say that these pieces are all gleaned from old notebooks. I am afraid to say that there were never any positive pieces about Becky B. A lot of the Janne poems are certainly positive as they can be, considering she was married to someone else and lived in another part of the state and then another state. I have some positive poems about Pat that I have been planning to post for awhile.
AS for Kimberly, and my daughters, if you go to the beginning of this poetry blog you will find numerous celebrations of these people in my life and of my relationship with the one Woman who truly matters to us all, the White Lady.
I would be interested in your evaluations of those poems. There is one based on the tree of laughing bells and a couple of statements about the kismet of meeting and loving Kimberly.
For awhile there I was writing poetry and it was going well, but that dried up last year. That is when I started looking at the old notebooks and pulling out things that nobody has ever seen. Not at that time. I was too prideful to display my loss and fear. But, that is gone now, and I am learning great things about myself from these poems. Maybe not so much about women, or Woman, but about me and my ego and my needs and the sadness that is me, sometimes. We all suffer in love at some time.
Post a Comment
<< Home