Once-Love: Time for You to Go

I have a hurricane for a heart, I see it from the space between us.

Counterclockwise / widdershins to time

I would turn the clocks back

And that would be easier than loving you now.

I would halt the sea as the next wave rises

So much simpler than trying not to

Write the words I want to say.

I feel tasered: my energy scatters in all directions;

My heart drums out your name

I stop my ears from answer

You cannot open these connections

You dare not flirt

For I will take you down.

And here, at my level, there are only your hands

My mouth…

And Hunger so strong

It hurts.

I cannot begin to use the words to say

What I feel

For the whole world would fall in love with me.

Swept away & far beyond

Where you have any permission to go.

 

“Ethics? The hell with ethics – it’s my life!”

I am calm. I dismiss the whole event out of hand.

Then your name on an email steals across the screen

Like a French kiss.

O God, I have been here before.

No Bollywood maiden, nor even matron

But ringing with tiny bells, rolling my kohl-shaped eyes

Slipping upstairs to the bedroom

Wearing only perfume.

Why you? You unlikely beast of passion

I do not even know your whole name

Only you wear holey sweaters.

And your smile replaces where my heart once dwelt.

You test a sentence on me; I am not sure you mean to say

What I hear. I am not sure I hear

What you say.

In the variation:

Wanting so much of one

The other sets up as pain.

My body is stately now, not shapely.

But every cell remembers passion &

That unremembered is easily created.

Tongues & fingertips – even toes to slide

There is silk here & salt where memory is only love

And I am a Fool beyond the boundary of

All the handbooks for the league of decency

Burnt to ash by the simple casual reply I give.

When I have erased six messages I could not send.

 

Don’t hit reply unless you mean it

You cannot understand how easily I will seduce you with words

Bring you to heel, to your unready knees

Or at least the closest chair

When they give way on you

I worry too much about appearances

When all that is remembered are results

I would create a fountain of you

And eagerly pull this into me

My tight interior, ready hips,

I would dance you into me

So you would not see the slack breasts

Or wrinkled thighs

My musk would be your air

And your breath would catch in wonder

To enter me; the holy of holies

The prize for which gods fought in times Before.

Don’t toy with me, don’t send me cute little words

For you are not my unwed lover

To take me in any fashion

But my own.

Beware the simple sentence

That compounds to loving me

For you will never return with words

To me what I will make you feel

You will touch once

For the burn scar can only remedy

By applications of the same

And yes, this is an almighty ego

Against which you bruise

But I will not be other than I am

To Love.

When with her, the only “lie” is to lie down in opening surrender.