Friday, November 4, 2022

A poem called “You” December 2012

   

From poem sent April 17, 2012

 

If the last year has taught me anything, it is how much of a bubble I’ve lived in most of my life, and how little I realized that sex is the principle occupation of the human race; first time sex, make up sex, rebound sex, working out sex, sex for any reason at all.

The idea of romantic sex – which I primarily believed in – is far down on that list.

She shocked me, even though I should not have been shocked since most of my life I have lived on the edges of a dark world, but always as what sociologists call “a tour guide,” maybe even a bit of a voyeur, looking at my not plunging too deeply into a society where people nearly constantly fucked.

Her poems last April burst that bubble a little and raised serious questions about my artificial integrity.

This poem highlighted that as she seemed to look right through all the masks I hid my real self behind.

“So help me, and you did, god or whatever looking down from above in a ridiculous crystal sky strewn with wisps of perfect clouds, while I swirled and couldn't figure out how to get you near me as my resolve just died, crumbled as I walked in that fucking door after you told me you couldn't look your wife in the eyes and I thought It was done,” she wrote. “And I thought my world that had been augmented by your beauty, was taken from me. Again. Good things. Gone. Again. Fuck.”

As with my reaction to other of the poems she sent or posted, I did not know what to make of them, of their sincerity, did she mean what she said or was she saying it to draw me in for some reason, as I clung to my bubble of morality that really didn’t exist except in my own mine.

She went on, “And then I walked by your desk, and then I saw your eye. and then I felt my soul soar from logic, and then I felt my. Control. Go. And I fell. Hard. Nearly died -- you gave Me life and took it from me in a simple statement And a simple, complex, impossible glance. Yet you saved me when you followed me out, out of the abyss of the normal which means endless things to me but with one look – from you. Nothing. And you guided me to breezes and water, that salvation of moving liquid. Cleansing

What I envision when I wake night after night, lost and screaming and wishing for death. Yes. I still do.

I'm good at hiding, but not from you, and all of a sudden, [you], all was perfect. Time stood still which never happens And I saw you, your eyes, heard your voice that soothes me and once again it all made sense but didn't, because None of it makes any fucking sense except that it does when you are there. And I fucking cried and you -- You did it.”

Over the last year, after having read all of her posted poems, I still alarmed by her hyperbole, and still wonder if it was bullshit or not, though in the nostalgic mood the end of the year always brings me, I wanted it not to be a lie.

She went on: “What I'd wanted for what seemed an eternity but was a simple week. You took me in.

I wanted to crush myself in as my heartbeat, impossible to slow, slowed with the rhythm of your breath, and the shit show left a few blocks behind didn't matter, and my soul felt soothed, like we'd done this before.  I can't explain. I don't want to. I want you. There, by the water, holding me, the sound of your voice rescuing me, and helping me to rescue myself, knowing I could respond with anything, and it won't matter because you know me, always, before, forever.”

At the time, the poem scared the crap out of me, the intensity of the emotions being expressed, the confusion at my actually having such an influence. Now, my logic pokes holes in it, although I realize after all the ups and downs, I realize she is capable of such intense emotions, mostly on the negative side as things deteriorated between us.

Did she really feel this intense back then, or was this some ploy to take me in?

She talks in this poem about saving her, and yet in one of the publicly posted poems to me, she said for me not to try to save her.

Even though the whole thing still embarrasses me, I want to believe it was a legitimate feeling, and in wanting that, I find myself all the more ashamed for having betrayed those feelings, knowing that once gone, they can never be revived.

 


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