Paul Verlaine’s Chanson d’automne
was coded – still popular poetry –
to give notice –
his long sobs of French-sung violins
declared an Allied invasion
to those listening
Whilst she never understood speeches
of love – and our common
mistakes –
I would rarely read to her – she rarely read
my mutterings – my weight-pared
compositions
She never understood what was being said
She found poetry too difficult –
her own résistance
This is an interval, ein Augenblick
Philp K. Dick
Before your lake – we stood naked
and overconfident in such ease –
having lost our cold distrusts
in earlier bared dips and slow strokes
Your surrounding land is disconnected
through every minute by our staying afloat
as we mark our desire path of currents
with briefly sunken bubbles
Over that unmeasured depth of secrets
below my grabbable limbs
you whisper – again – of being taken
and my fear of drowning is reawakened
There is a dry patch on your neck
that emits a hazy whiff of chlorine
There are no known medical conditions
to explain your chemical sweat
You break the surface from your dive
as if expelled by buoyant hate
having brushed my shrunken parts
whilst playing with my sinking fears
It takes seconds for your eyes
to open – birthed in that brief ooze
of broken tensions – we have no rope
to pull us from our uncharted abyss
You have chosen your strapped seat
to sit at – as you put out to sea
with bright paint and long blades –
to be pulled around buoy set points –
then to be steered without tipping
under rare blade clashes and shouts
but always matched to find a balance –
It is only in wished-for millpond conditions
with the most fabulous sunset
and equal drifts of morning stillness
that everything fits and clicks to timings
Enjoy that sweet run of symmetrical effort
This hushed hour is mine
around our slept-still house
as tea scabs to cold in that mug
beside my half-empty bed –
my asset of sleep is long lost
Me – not being cocky enough
to walk outside and scratch
at this started day’s waking
Me – not wanting to unearth
all that has been lost overnight
Yesterday’s quitting of clothes
is bared evidence of my new ways
now there is no inquisition
or other solutions – I love it
Such sluttery no longer matters
We lay parallel on your sofa
as if raft-bound – beached –
rolled tight into hard intimacy –
into another urge of pushes
and pulls – you are so slight
that it seems almost fictional
An unexpected blast of verse
as rare as washed up ambergris
is our mute communion of sex
