from Outtakes
off on this
morning's El my
last glimpse of
you today/maybe
I'll live through
this afternoon
chasing personal
demons of the kind
that wire you
up/maybe I won't
but I am wired here
and lonely/glimpsing
you/through this
borrowed machine
your hair/spread out
blonde corona/walking
away to the world
which doesn't deserve
to share you
From a series of short poems written in Lincoln Park in the fall of 1973 and mailed to Alison Gaughan. She showed them to Knoepfle and he used them to start his chapbook series, based on money from a donated fund he was able to get out of the university. The poem is one of many poems I wrote to Pat Smith. Although she was thirteen years older than me, with two children and a professor husband (not to mention a professor lover, John Knoll, who was married to her best friend), we seemed to get along quite well. The first several years of our relationship were mainly based on sex. Joel's mother, Becky McGovern, was not very sexual. Or maybe I was very sexual. In any case, Pat had lived with Larry for fourteen years and they hadn't had much sex, and she was not happy about it. So she would be available essentially any time I wanted, and this maintained through most of our relationship. She also was somewhat more adventurous than Becky McGovern, who had pretty strict rules as to what was okay with her.
When I eventually split up with Pat I still slept with her for about another year while living with Bradway. Bradway was not a giving person, shall we say, and getting sex from her was always a certain amount of work. Unless she wanted something from you; then she would do whatever it took to get her way. At least that is how she was with me. Hopefully that has nothing to do with how she is now.
I did love Pat. It was only after I came to understand the contempt she held my work in that I had to separate from her. She loved her vision of me, not the me that actually existed. Maybe that is always the case. Kimberly seems to know the real me, and forgives me that person, and so I trust her more than anyone else.
morning's El my
last glimpse of
you today/maybe
I'll live through
this afternoon
chasing personal
demons of the kind
that wire you
up/maybe I won't
but I am wired here
and lonely/glimpsing
you/through this
borrowed machine
your hair/spread out
blonde corona/walking
away to the world
which doesn't deserve
to share you
From a series of short poems written in Lincoln Park in the fall of 1973 and mailed to Alison Gaughan. She showed them to Knoepfle and he used them to start his chapbook series, based on money from a donated fund he was able to get out of the university. The poem is one of many poems I wrote to Pat Smith. Although she was thirteen years older than me, with two children and a professor husband (not to mention a professor lover, John Knoll, who was married to her best friend), we seemed to get along quite well. The first several years of our relationship were mainly based on sex. Joel's mother, Becky McGovern, was not very sexual. Or maybe I was very sexual. In any case, Pat had lived with Larry for fourteen years and they hadn't had much sex, and she was not happy about it. So she would be available essentially any time I wanted, and this maintained through most of our relationship. She also was somewhat more adventurous than Becky McGovern, who had pretty strict rules as to what was okay with her.
When I eventually split up with Pat I still slept with her for about another year while living with Bradway. Bradway was not a giving person, shall we say, and getting sex from her was always a certain amount of work. Unless she wanted something from you; then she would do whatever it took to get her way. At least that is how she was with me. Hopefully that has nothing to do with how she is now.
I did love Pat. It was only after I came to understand the contempt she held my work in that I had to separate from her. She loved her vision of me, not the me that actually existed. Maybe that is always the case. Kimberly seems to know the real me, and forgives me that person, and so I trust her more than anyone else.
Labels: Alison Clare Gaughan, Becky Bradway, Becky McGovern, Joel Osburn, John Knoll, Knoepfle, Larry Smith, Pat Smith
posted by As Bjorn at 8:56 PM
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