When I am in love odd things happen. The world changes in so many ways. I find gratitude in odd places. Sometimes when it is going very well, is very fresh, there is a kind of quality to the light and sound of things, to the feel of things. Only LSD ever came close to this experience of being high and that only twice. I know what it means to be able to say I would die for love. I haven't felt like that since 1999. Before that time I had not felt like that since 1970. What is really cool, the echoes of love are still in my soul. I am so deeply grateful I have never been embittered no matter what happened.
By the way, I loved my wife with a life love but she never took me, transported me, changed me like this. I am not sure it is wise to marry someone who has this power in your soul. At least for me, the women who changed me like this would not have been good marriage material.
Black Pepper
I hear her. She stirs
Behind the words she wrote down,
Below the sweet rhymes
She made while setting
Her gratefulness in this place,
Declares black pepper
The fruit of her choice,
Asks me to hang a crescent.
This moon's lit by grace.
She defines the space
Near my heart and all this while
She caresses my face.
January 23, 2009 10:47 PM
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I sometimes think about how evolution has placed us here, unquestionably animal, directly linked. DNA and mitochondrial DNA both do not lie. Bonobo Chimps are something like 98% human by DNA. And that's first of course, that our cells are themselves communities, that before bodies a symbiosis of one celled creatures occured with the mitochondria climbing inside to help the other cells by helping themselves. This is essential. And then plants and then animals. And then mammalians and then apelike creatures, and then our branch. I hate to think what happened to our forerunners and contemporaries because humans have always been so bloody minded. It is unquestionable that we overlapped with Neanderthal. We now have Neanderthal DNA, enough that it looks like we either didn't or couldn't interbreed as was thought for a while. This very likely means that we killed them.
I keep track of this stuff because I need to know somehow. But I get in some trouble with this brain of mine...
Brain Shaving
My brain needs shaving,
It's whiskers, too long, lead to
Thoughts like bears or cats.
I gather berries, or hunt
Hapless prey who bleat at me,
Do not pay due heed
To things like washing dishes
Or making the bed.
January 24, 2009 11:36 AM
Contraction
1 week ago
Your story of love and Black Pepper poem reminded me of my lover from my early 20s. That complete sense of wild transformation and loss of control. Ultimately destructive, but now held in warm remembrance. I'm new to your blog and really enjoying it.
ReplyDelete:)
Oh I am so glad to be reminded of the feeling of being in love like that... but glad also that I did not marry the guy, he would have been bad for me eventually. (I tell myself in my quiet recriminations). ;D
ReplyDeleteI love the structure of Black Pepper. You usually stay away from rhyme, but it works beautifully here as summary and statement.
ReplyDeleteBrain Shaving may be my favorite. I think you should send this out!
Never heard it quite like that, brain needing shaving. Hmmmmm. Clever brain. Knows how to get food for sustenance and ignore the clean-up chores.
ReplyDeletePurest Green, welcome. Yes. It is most often young love. Yet the last time it happened for me, I was not young, nor was my love, in no way simple or fantastic in the critical ways, just welcoming all fantasy as expressive, like going to a dance, or holding a ritual two years long. I wish I knew how to explain it better. I was 54 when this started.
ReplyDeleteSG, yes. Glad you did not marry, but with a thread of what if in it. Sure that he would be bad, but possibly... I have one great regret in this love path, one woman I was so sure would never care for me that I never took serious what was happening for hopeless love of another. When I woke up it was already too late and I felt really stupid. But. I would have been terrible for this girl, no doubt, not at all ready for the grown up role I would have been called to take. I hurt her quite innocently. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Karen, This happens to me too. I have favorites only then I have other favorites. No, wait, these are my favorites. Thank you for your comment about rhyme. I think I am awful at rhyme and the thing was, I discovered rather than crafted it in this poem. I was surprised to notice it. Most often I will use rhyme in this way, at or near the end of poems, like sonnets. I have almost no knowledge of formal poetic forms.
TB, I have a more or less constant beef with the world, that my inner rhythms almost never leave enough time for the whole job the world seems to require. I can finish but only with the teeth gritting energy of forced labor. I often will not start and put off work, knowing I am really only good for half of it, then my inner compass says that should really be enough, though it never is. Thus most stuff in this world is not worth it to me, I want it all for half price so to speak. The only stuff that overrides my nature carries with it features of obsession. I have never really made peace with this to my satisfaction. Clean up ALWAYS suffers in such an inner state. This is not even laziness. I am as energetically engaged in the next task.
However in another context, I also have a slower rhythm than most, and am happier on an easy and quiet afternoon with little to do than nearly anywhere.
Black Pepper = wonderful! I love when characterization comes across in little actions: declaring "black pepper as her fruit of choice" speaks volumes about the subject. Well done. :)
ReplyDelete:D Thanks, Joseph
ReplyDeletethank God you posted more poetry! this blog was becoming far too political for my taste!
ReplyDeleteHmmm, Ghost...it all started when I scanned your site, read your last post, and noticed that your last three posts started "as I was saying to my friends at Lucianne.com..." I am happy to provide breathing space on occasion for such things, but indeed, I have an ideological program of my own. Right now my prescription for right thinking is brain shaving. That after sniffing and tasting black pepper.
ReplyDeletequite the ideologue you....
ReplyDeleteVery male......*grin*
ReplyDeleteStill, I am all that, if someone would just look deeply enough.....
x
Wow. I bet you are, girl.
ReplyDeleteI married at 16, and have gone through a malestom ever since. There was someone who came into my life about 4 years ago when I having doubts about things, he liked me a lot, I liked him, but... he wouldn't let me sort things with my husband, so I couldn't take him seriously and wouldn't jump into another relationship. After I got away from the situation I could see things that would have been bad about being with him. But geez, that new love feeling is terrific, but fleeting. Loves a tricky game my friend.
ReplyDeleteYes, love's a tricky game at least until you are seasoned enough to know your own quirks. Actually it's still tricky just not as dangerous when you do know your own quirks.
ReplyDeleteOlder age is better because one of the big ones quiets down. I am no longer driven by sex, can still have sex but can also walk away for the rest of my life if I must, walk away easily. I can't say enough for my release from that driven piece of it. Appreciating women and their sexiness is still a part of my consciousness but more like works of art, and not like objects of need. That was mostly illusion anyway.