A meeting of two old friends

[vaneramos]

You want me to feel you again
and play doubting Thomas
like doctor in the secret garden.
Maybe we should check my own unhealed wounds.
My hands, my side.

Here:
My genitals, you must have bitten
hard those thirteen years of manhood lost.
Growing back was a miracle.

Finally I became—we became men together,
at last at the tip
the touch of eternity burning my glans
firing, streaming,
screaming across heavens
a vast unbelief
tearing clouds of fraud
that blocked our eyes.

Truth scrolled up
and crashed on the schoolroom floor.
At once a child again
my only original sin
was being born to a world of churches.
What I really wanted
(how I hated myself)
was x-ray eyes to see
how another boy looked
inside his shame.
To crawl within tenderness
bruised, surrounding, pooling tears.

A lion, you tore away limbs and flesh,
my whole skin a scab
the scales of Eustace.
The creatures cried "Faggot!"
in the voice of a lion
and innocence scorched like silk in dragon's breath,
curling, wafting on smoke.

Sometime earlier, later,
you hung there suffering, you did,
no longer, not yet a lion.
We met in Gethsemane years ago
and wept together in darkness.
Minds across centuries, empty ages defied.

I put my hand in your wound,
you yours in mine.

Then we popped olives
in one another's mouths,
fell laughing amongst the lilies.
The moon rode high
on the flow of our desire
milky, shining with a burst from shrouded sky.
We came together, we groaned and cried.

Under dappled silver
I slept at your shoulder
you whispered me dreams.
At dawn I departed:
a new journey
without betrayal.

Remember that?
And you want to feel it again.


Based on a free_write post earlier this afternoon. My thoughts took me by surprise. This poem asked to be written.

Comments

[quirkstreet.livejournal.com]

I'm bowled over. I don't have enough time to respond adequately to how affecting this is.

Wow.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

I'd like to hear your thoughts someday when you do have time. Walking in the pleasant evening light just now, playing over the words in my head, I found several things that relate to you.

[eloquentwthrage.livejournal.com]

That is good work...

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[crazysoph.livejournal.com]

Positive: wow. Some great turns of phrase, real transports carrying me to a different world.

Something that's not the opposite of positive: I find myself the slightest bit distracted by the olive thing... perhaps because I remember someone telling me that olives fresh from the tree were actually poisonous, and to get to their edible state they needed a lot of work. So, I guess that means I'm being a bit of a pedant? Still, mutual feeding something is a strong contributor to the poem, and if it's directly available, while falling among the lilies, so much the better. So, what have I missed about olives?

Crazy(and feeling suddenly like she's become an Alice in Wonderland, pursuing surreal and shifting meanings...)Soph

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Not a pedant. Your criticism is absolutely correct. That line nagged me when I wrote it. I knew there was a problem with fresh olives, but wasn't sure what to do about it.

I could argue for irreverence and silliness. It's a moment in which all meaning is tossed to the wind, and they might as well be olives out of martini glasses. But everything else about the poem is genuine, so why not the joy of that moment? I need to do some research and find a fitting alternative. Pomegranates maybe.

Are you a fan of Lewis Carroll?

[crazysoph.livejournal.com]

In reverse order...

I'm not especially a fan of Carroll's but the book Alice in Wonderland was a wonderfully strange read when I was smaller. And the effect of reading your poem, as a straight woman, is to find myself confronting something at the same time recognizable and utterly strange... to me, I must say again.

As for irreverence and silliness.... the moment in which the olive occur is so fresh that it seems a shame to introduce an element like olives from martinis (what, where did they come from? my pedant brain wails) Pomegranates are something I would have suggested, in a sort of "I don't know if this would work for you" way... Joy, yes, absolutely. But gardens seem rather distant from cocktail bars.

You've posed a good connundrum. I'll be pleased if you privilege us to see its solution. (Keeping in mind that privacy is always your perogative, so I'm feeling like you've treated us to a good thing.)

Crazy(and wondering which mirror to look in...)Soph

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Homoeroticism only works into a few of my poems, but several times I've read them in public and my audiences seem to like them best. It's as if the feelings are familiar to everyone, but expressed from a different angle that gives them new meaning—through a looking glass! It's an invigorating experience.

The reason I asked about Lewis Carroll is that the novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo (have you heard of that?) was partly inspired by the Alice books.

[daisydumont.livejournal.com]

i just commented on the freewrite. here i'll only add that the following lines do that thing that good poetry does to me -- i have to pause after the rhythm of the four words on the second line and simply feel them. very nice.

Maybe we should check my own unhealed wounds.
My hands, my side.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Always glad to make people think, DD, even if they come up with different answers. :-)