Just when you would least expect it, her latest posted poem returns to the love story she started last January, although clearly a longing for what once was, and most likely won’t be again – or maybe, something infrequent.
Like many of her poems, this one appears to be an effort to explain her situation to someone for whom she has sincere affection, and from whom she hopes to gain acceptance again.
Whether this is the same person she wrote previous poems to, it’s hard to say, although she is clearly trying to sway him.
(In my self-deception, I wanted to believe this is a response to a song I posted, but it is not).
But the poem does reflect her current mindset, a kind of forlorn wish that things were different than they turned out.
Things have calmed, she says, the “Those of wanting” this thing have some how leveled out, moving onto a mothering undefinable plain.
And yet it always there, “the floaty space between head and heart,” while other things “traverse the realer plains of existence.”
She is basically saying, that while her desire for him has calmed to some degree, she still wants him, as she tries to balance what her brain tells her, against what her heart aches for.
She still lusts for him, breathing deeply, feeling him all around her, seeing him when she closed her eyes, hearing his voice when she falls to sleep.
He courses through the veins of her existence, even though he is rarely with her physically.
It might be a wrong assumption to think this poem continues the theme of her previous love poems, still longing for the man with whom she had an affair earlier this year.
(I might be wrong in this assumption, and it is possible she has simply found another man to lust after. But the feeling the poem evokes suggests a longer-term relationship than some new affair.)
She is clearly struggles with her lust and her desire to be with him against some other factors not made clear in the poem, perhaps his marriage or engagement getting once more in the way of her happiness, his inability to spend time with her because of that fact.
The last few lines of the poem make it clear just how intensely she feels, and that something is keeping them apart. The poem might be a siren’s song, calling him back from the ether, hoping to fix this disparity of Floaty space between her head and heart.
She is alone, full of anguish, reaching out to him in the poem to express how much she still feels for him, a long-distance manipulation perhaps to bring him back into her arms and bed.
He consumes her ever waking thought, and perhaps her dreams as well.
He may be deliberately keeping his distance from her, making her agony worse.
In some ways, this is really two poems, the first of which gives a progress report on her current situation, while the second is a love poem that expresses how much she adores him.
The first part of the poem strongly resembles the themes of several previous poems, a Romeo & Juillet like situation in which some larger force may be keeping them apart, perhaps she has fallen for something in an opposition political camp – which could explain all those contacts she has with so many political people who are in opposition to the Virgin Mayor.
My best guess, however, is that this is a personal poem, not a political one, and whatever keeps them apart has little or nothing to do with politics.
As pointed out previously, she is telling her lover that things have calmed down for her – her ambitions have leveled out into something unknown.
In other words, she thought she knew what she wanted, now she’s not so sure, but the agony of desire has grown less intense, even though she still longs for him.
Although desire is still there, there is a gap between logic and love, and she floats in that limbo uncertain about what to do next, if she can do anything at all.
Common sense tells her to move on; her heart tells her she can’t. So, she floats in between these two unattainable options.
It is clear that her ambitions have been put into check by circumstances, yet not extinguished. She still loves him and wants him, and wishes he were physically with her, when in every other imagined way, he’s in her heart and head all the time.
The repeated word “plane” is significant in that she defines her ambition as leveling out into a plane of its own. It’s always there floating between her heart and her head, while herd and heard deal with the real planes of existence.
These planes are the every day stuff, the stuff of survival, how to push ahead, and to somehow wake up each morning without fear.
As a progress report, the poem seems to want to reassure the reader (whomever she is writing it for) that she still feels affection towards him.
Linking this with previous poems in which she sees no right or wrong, fair or unfair, she has come to accept the reality of survival, although this poem shows she still aches for love.
She must do what she must do, trickling up to survive, surrendering herself to fate – as one of the previous poems suggests, fallen while at the same time finding beauty perhaps even forgiveness, none the less still waking up afraid and is forced to calm herself.
Her ambition – whether for success or for success in love – has been tempered by reality. She does not know what comes next.
I can almost hear the other side of this poetic conversation (which goes back to a previous poem) in which he says life is complicated, while she maintains it’s simple – she and he are alone and that’s all there is.
It is easy to imagine him in pain, asking what she intends to do, and why can’t he see her. He seems to be reasonably intelligent, and into the arts well enough for him to comprehend what she is saying poetically.
In some ways, she may well be the one responsible for keeping him distant, telling him how much she loves him, but needs space (floating between heart and brain) for her to sort her life out.
Of course, it is possible that she has someone on the hook and the poem is designed to keep him calm, while she figures out what to do next.
Is she simply leading him on, telling him she loves him, and yet at the same time, keeps him at arm’s length, saying she needs to get her head straight, while she is looking for someone else that she can trickle up with.
If this last is true, then this poem takes on a whole different perspective, a kind of game in which she keeps him on the hook while looking to hook someone else.
Who can say for sure?
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