I would add a Parental Warning Advisory, but only to the first poem.
A Love Affair (15:53min)
Broadband: A Love Affair
Dial-up: A Love Affair
Sheath of feeling. Words groping to touch air.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
A Love Affair
This series of poems is about a love affair a few years ago. The gentleman and I haven't been in touch since. Enough time has passed for me to release this recording, made in March 2006. Most of these poems can be found in the archives at Rubies In Crystal.
I would add a Parental Warning Advisory, but only to the first poem.
A Love Affair (15:53min)
Broadband: A Love Affair
Dial-up: A Love Affair
I would add a Parental Warning Advisory, but only to the first poem.
A Love Affair (15:53min)
Broadband: A Love Affair
Dial-up: A Love Affair
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Very impressive, moving, and intense, Brenda. This is my first, gut reaction. I will be back tomorrow to write a real comment, just found out I have to pick up friends who are stranded at 3 in the morning. Thank you for twittering us about it!
ReplyDeleteWild Ride had a real freshness that reminded me of Erica Jong's radical erotic poetry of the late Sixties to early Eighties, when she was hitting her true form and finding the voice that made Fear of Falling such an extraordinary account of vulnerability and toughness, swagger and sweat, pleasure and openness to all things libidinal. Like Jong, here you show full gusto (and the gustatory sense, a wonderfully drawn out motif ending with the word delicious) for the new encounter, and although we get a sense of extremely intelligent people meeting for the first time (talk of neuroscience, sex as a form of research) we immediately get to night animals, rawness, the contact of that high off of the speaker's sequence with her young guy toward backseat jouissance.
ReplyDeleteSuperb, Brenda.
John, thank you so much for your generous comments! Wild ride was wild, and I, too, like that little piece, though he made me take it down from my blog despite his anoniminity, of course.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't had sex at that time in about five years (turns out I'm real fussy, who'd guess?) and, gentleman that he was, he didn't want to make me wait -:)
Erica Jong, ah John, I never got into her... though I certainly read Anais Nin... and My Secret Garden... and the Kama Sutra, plus many other classical texts on sacred sex... it was fun to write, and felt a little 'bad,' 'wild,' but sex is a hard thing to write about well, as you know. Less is often more.
The recording is actually one I did for my gentleman friend after I'd ended the relationship and he said it made him cry.
He was very sweet, always.
Blogger is not letting me leave this long comment that contains the poems read in the recording... trying again.
ReplyDeleteWild Ride, poems from December 2005 – March 2006
Brenda Clews
wild ride
The day after their second date, she ate leftover curry for lunch. The tandoori chicken, curried mixed vegetables and roti was packed for her at the Indian restaurant where she had been taken for dinner by the gentleman. He spoke of research on the chemistry of the brain, the hedonism of jazz musicians, and sex parties. He said it would be a wild ride. He was younger than she, by seven years. She hadn't, thus far, been attracted to younger men, preferring men her own age; but, then, he was persuasive. She was sure he used a pheromone-laced after-shave, kissing him was intoxicating. In his SUV afterwards, parked in a public lot in the frigid air, their jeans open to each other's exploring hands, their tongues on fire, tasting his hardness, her head cradled by the steering wheel, she suggested they drive to look for an empty alley to park in. They never got that far. The sojourn into the back seat provided an instant gratification that was most satisfying: one leg of her jeans off, his pants down, she slid onto him, writhing, a florid padma lotus position, enjoying their first intimacy. That the occupants of the next car had arrived and driven off without the lovers noticing made them laugh. As she liked to tell her friends later, he was delicious.
Bosc Pears
On the wooden windowsill. Facing south, but too low for the winter sun. Bodies enclosed in olive brown sheaths. Blending into the wood, they lie, rounded thighs, elegant elongated necks, like decorations. A week passes where daily I hold them, press their flesh. They are like fragile stones.
On the weekend I eat one, its pale honey-coloured flavourless fruit hard and crunchy as an apple's.
Those thick, gourd-shaped, olive-brown hides don't soften. They will never soften. Only a dark spot near the stem of one of the pears reveals ripeness as it begins to collapse inwards to nourish the seeds. Even without the presence of warm soil, they would lie on the windowsill and crumple slowly, decay into new life, its possibility.
I cut them and scoop out their seeds and peel the thick russeted skin and slice them and drop them into a bowl, with apples and cranberries, for a compote. They are not so juicy that they slide in my fingers. Sometimes pears don't ripen, but remain dry and coarse. Licking the pear juice, its faint unmistakable flavour, slightly grainy, like delicate sweet-spiced sun, on my fingers, I smile. Patience to this moment of perfection.
The dog is barking, my lover is here. I crumble the topping of oats, flour, brown sugar, butter, nutmeg, ginger and cinnamon over the mixture of fruit, fresh lemon juice and honey, place the dessert in the slow cooker; later in the day, the fruit will feed my slender pear-shaped body...
On the Location Of
Musica mundana, humana, practica. Conciliance, interconnectedness, unity. Gestalt. Impure purity of the mixture of everything. When the mess appears in the picture of the place, when the angry, bitter edges aren't hidden by the smooth surfaces of the portrait, where the blood courses beneath a fine veneer of skin. Get in close, see the pores, the pulse beneath the eye, the browning teeth. And let go, in that place of closeness, heart beating on heart, where it is dissembling, the sharp smell of breath on the body of desire. Ecstasy accepts where it is collapsing, what in us is repulsing, with the coming towards, where edges melt into, the disappearing. Light sweeps the universe without discriminating. The whole is greater than the parts. Even Apollo weeps. A music of the spheres, more than speculation. Quivering theoretical strings sing. Feel our bodies. We are pulses of electricity, energy, and chemical processes, an organics of living. Think of it as a masterpiece, the orgasm.
Window in the Earth (a photopoem)
In the earth, where I am, the walls
holding back the soil. Painted
pink, but cold. Buried. Luminous
light, the lattice: I look up, gaze,
caught by the beauty breaking in.
Rolling ocean of light billowing,
off to other edges, across a
wide, imagined sky. A dust of
snow on the ground, why does it
look like sugar granules, and why
do we reflect our inner states onto
the landscape? All the moments up
to this were letting go. As the sun
spills, insouciant, in, kissing my
upturned face, I know. The heart,
a flowing cauldron of luminosity,
or call it love.
Canvas of Light
Moving across the canvas, shadows. In the lights once I counted five shadows, some short and close, others long and stretching far. Did that mean I existed? How do photons spin around us and collide into the wall leaving a dark imprint of our shape? Are our obscure lives the canvas that catches us? I dance through the hours of my days, sitting, walking, sleeping, eating, talking. Breath is a dance. Displacing the air, sending the light spinning around us, the impulse of our thoughts flinging ideas into being through our bodies. Is a dance. At your computer screen your dancing fingers on the keys playing music for me who reads you. A grammar of light flies off into incandescence, shadowing, spotlighting, a flux that captures us, moments burnt into negative space, where it's empty, in the vastness of dark energy between the luminescences. Give me a moment, this pensiveness, before I turn and gaze upon you, love.
Mezzotint, Encounters of the Moment
fragments, bits of, rrrrtttt....zzzzzz,
mezzotint, burnt lines in the dark road,
clouds, unknown forces, words, no context,
jangles on my wrist, gold nib to write with,
these are always close.
jabs, nerve endings, a soft body in repose,
drumming on the gas pedal,
images collide, digital pixels float,
memory jangling
mirrored sparks of prophecy
just out of reach.
and will you, when, disturb me,
my shuffled meditation,
this dark night's matins,
on the insouciance, burnished colour
abstracted from meaning.
buzzing, humming, rrrrttttzzzzzz,
falling over the edge, just this side of,
hover, don't move,
be still.
neon, incandescent calligraphy of light, bulbs, headlights
motors, the hum of the earth, calling, rotated,
slighted, dabs, paint like slick icing,
all the signs fly past
pasted billboards
on love.
stitches, metallic, across the ink dark fabric,
jumbles of wheels, motors, brakes,
swerving, nearly
finding this
moment.
undress dressings, peel back,
mezzotints engraved on water, broken lines scrape,
furrow in white, the black unbroken back,
where the heart, big band
jazz, complex colliding rhythm.
syncopate, pulsate, dizzy throw
even the ground is shaking,
falling into what is
escaping.
when dawn finally arises I see a a landscape of curves
and shadows, hollows and hills, water and jutting rock
carved into
this road.
stop, emerge, a burnished feather, stylus
in the damp air, falling
folds of lines curving over
to soft flaming edges.
that is when, you.
moon under ice clouds (a photopoem)
myst-
ery
of...
shake
stars
on the path
by the hedge
deep imaginings
the bush
of diamonds
where
I carry
an umbrella
frozen pellets
of rain
the moon under
ice clouds
nocturnal
overflowing...
by tomorrow
the
glistening, gone
A woman who is always there, somewhere
In his "wish stream" a woman like her doesn't exit. She is beyond the years of possibility. She is slipped into, and relaxed in, like a well-worn dressing gown, a comfortable old couch, a favourite cafe in which to ponder one's thoughts. She is the warmth of a female oasis where struggle isn't necessary. She is the mother's arms, the place of acceptance, the restful time of sunset. She is the quietening. She is not just over the hill, but down in the valley on the other side, laughing and dancing her opulences. There is no need to impress her, or even to pursue her. She is a feature of the unchanging land. The aging woman with unbounded compassion towards herself and him. She is a prophecy of what he can become. Now she lies like sheer vintage lace over his vision. A bit obscuring, a reaction to the fickleness of his youthful women, an attempt at having a fixture of permanence to rebound back to. But it isn't what he wants, what he dreams of, what quickens his body, opens his heart. The 'wish stream' of images, visions, idealizations of love that he yearns for in his dreamy harem of beautiful women only includes a house mother who services others. Her yellowing teeth, her aging skin and its wrinkles not for the ardour of sweet romance. He found his way into her realm to heal a tired and wounded heart, the slings and outrageous arrows of lost love, and now he must make his way out and away from her, glistening again like a new-born baby.
Winnowing
We find ourselves in alleys,
the underpasses of our lives,
the places we cross through.
Where the cities don't reach.
Where the highrises and cultural centres
and shopping concourses aren't.
The backsides of houses,
in the litter that collects in the tunnels.
Scraps of memories, fragments of thoughts.
I thought I found you on Cherry Beach
in sand like a dune twisted with flecks,
the edge of the water littered with overflow,
scraps, what's thrown overboard,
what washes up on the shore from
other shores winnowed by the waves.
Did I romanticize you?
I don't think so.
I saw your depths,
the broken double helixes,
the places where you re-thread
your thoughts again and again.
Where we replay
what was, what never was.
I want to blank out the obsessional
complusive areas of my brain. To be
free.
We are incomprehensible to ourselves.
Beneath the flow of this constructed city,
soil, silt, rock, caverns of water,
the earth turning on its axis of magma,
the flow of a volatile consciousness.
Beneath the clutter, the mélange
the edges of our lives,
tumbling,
beneath.
Love Note…
I walk around with love in my heart for you. There is no other word.
But now the heated discussions, disappearances, silences. I remember one of the first things you said was that the mind always finds what's wrong, what doesn't work; the heart finds what's right.
I'm altruistic enough though to hope you are finding a woman who is younger, more possible; you're a very loving man who would make a great father, you have that kind of caring and commitment. I could never give you this: children of your own. It's best.
My heart radiates love for you, open, beautiful.
Fragments...
Only this:
'To love.' The infinitive of an active transitive verb with an open-ended objet de l'amour...
Blessings in sharing these through the spoken language.
ReplyDeleteThe gift is not only in each written composition (which stand in testament to excellence), but in the ability to bring them to a whole new dimension through the reading of them aloud.
Quite impressive!
Peace~:)
Dear Myna, thank you, dear friend. xo
ReplyDelete