Temper
Time and again, I struggle with her perception of my love for her. She says she loves me, and so I believe; but can she ever, truly, in her human state know the passion that boils for her beneath this skin of stone?
She lies in my bed, in my home, in my arms. What a vision to breach tonight! She could not know the joy that swelled within me upon witnessing her here, amongst my things, belonging here, belonging with me. Though she slept, she rang vibrantly alive and reposed. Here. Mine. Mine. My possessiveness allayed my distress. I became more of a man.
And so, my undoing.
My thoughts crash around her, wild and eager to be with her as husband to wife, but that day must wait. It must! Knowing that she is fragile now, knowing I crush her with my desperate, choking love… The physical part of me, the man left inside me, yearns to break free and take her.
Let me think of a better day. There, the stirrings of a song, yes, that is what that day will be… Lilting, lifting, lithe and free – a day when we are happy and free of this world.
Spontaneous
me, Nature,
The loving day, the mounting sun, the friend I am
happy with,
The arm of my friend hanging idly over my shoulder,
The hill-side whiten'd with blossoms of the mountain ash,
The
same, late in autumn—the hues of red, yellow, drab, purple, and
light and dark
green,
The rich coverlid of the grass—animals
and birds—the private untrimm'd
bank—the primitive
apples—the pebble-stones,
Beautiful dripping fragments—the
negligent list of one after another, as I happen to
call them to
me, or think of them,
The real poems, (what we call poems being
merely pictures,)
The poems of the privacy of the night, and of
men like me,
This poem, drooping shy and unseen, that I always
carry, and that all men carry,
(Know, once for all, avow'd on
purpose, wherever are men like me, are our lusty,
lurking,
masculine poems…
Again! I am undone again, by a dead man's barbaric yawp! Her scent fills me and the combination of his words mixed with her aroma is heady. Improper. Once again my physical desire collides with the chaste restraint I must exercise today.
This night is mine to adore her. This night my spirit sings knowing she begrudges sharing my attention, even with those of my past. The years behind me drop like a stone in the sea; the future unfurls before me like a map of the universe with countless worlds to explore, explore together, throughout eternity, intimate, warm, private… How will I make it through this everlasting night? How will she make it through this night?
It is a soft purring that saves me now. You've saved me, love, and so saved yourself, and so saved us. Ah, love, you've saved us again.
