Wait

Wait

By C. K. Williams

 

Chop, hack, slash; chop, hack, slash; cleaver, boning knife, ax—

not even the clumsiest clod of a butcher could do this so crudely,   

time, as do you, dismember me, render me, leave me slop in a pail,

one part of my body a hundred years old, one not even there anymore,   

another still riven with idiot vigor, voracious as the youth I was   

for whom everything always was going too slowly, too slowly.

It was me then who chopped, slashed, through you, across you,   

relished you, gorged on you, slugged your invisible liquor down raw.

Now you're polluted; pulse, clock, calendar taint you, befoul you,

you suck at me, pull at me, barbed wire knots of memory tear me,   

my heart hangs, inert, a tag-end of tissue, firing, misfiring,   

trying to heave itself back to its other way with you.

But was there ever really any other way with you? When I ran

as though for my life, wasn't I fleeing from you, or for you?

Wasn't I frightened you'd fray, leave me nothing but shreds?

Aren't I still? When I snatch at one of your moments, and clutch it,

a pebble, a planet, isn't it wearing away in my hand as though I,   

not you, were the ocean of acid, the corrosive in I which dissolve?

Wait, though, wait: I should tell you too how happy I am,

how I love it so much, all of it, chopping and slashing and all.

Please know I love especially you, how every morning you turn over

the languorous earth, for how would she know otherwise to do dawn,

to do dusk, when all she hears from her speech-creatures is "Wait!"?   

We whose anguished wish is that our last word not be "Wait."

When the spent day begins to frail

When the spent day begins to frail

by E. E. Cummings

when the spent day begins to frail
(whose grave already three or two
young stars with spades of silver dig)

by beauty i declare to you

if what i am at one o'clock
to little lips(which have not sinned
in whose displeasure lives a kiss)
kneeling, your frequent mercy begs,

sharply believe me, wholly, well
— did(wisely suddenly into
a dangerous womb of cringing air)
the largest hour push deep his din

of wallowing male(shock beyond shock
blurted) strokes, vibrant with the purr
of echo pouring in a mesh
of following tone: did this and this

spire strike midnight and did occur
bell beyond fiercely spurting bell
a jetted music splashing fresh
upon silence) i without fail

entered became and was these twin
imminent lisping bags of flesh;
became eyes moist lithe shuddering big,
the luminous laughter, and the legs

whereas, at twenty minutes to

one, i am this blueeyed Finn.
emerging from a lovehouse who
buttons his coat against the wind

Heating and Cooling--A Work in Progress

"Sure, come over so we can emotionally destroy one another. It's for my art." I'd said this as a joke. But I'm no longer laughing.

  

"Maybe I no longer find you smart, charming, or funny." I never said that. Not out loud. Never out loud.

"A tulip in the desert won't last long." You knew this to be true, you who claim to love nothing but your children and "hedonistic adventures." At least you love something. A man who loves something can never be truly evil.

I believe you loved me, but at the same time, somehow, deep down in my darkest heart, I also knew you played with my feelings. As if other people's feelings somehow weren't altogether real to you. As if you never trusted me to love you if I knew the truth. The truth of your fragility and terror. Life has been so cruel to you. I know. I smile and say nothing. We risk being subjected to worse cruelties.

But you have many cruelties.

I still can't escape the feeling that we've done this, all of this, before. There were portents; signs to be read and interpreted. We are familiar and yet do not know each other. Why did I even write this for you? In part, because you're so breathtakingly perfect that it makes my soul ache. I still have this fantasy of you. The perfect you. The dream I had of you and I in perfect union.

A Very Basic Misunderstanding

I realize, too late, that we have failed to understand something important. I've tried to pinpoint the exact moment of misunderstanding, but cannot. Nor am I able to discern the exact nature of this failure of understanding. I know only that it was important that we not fail. In this failure there was a decisive moment, that I cannot recall, when your heart hardened against mine and there is no going back. For us it was a point of no return. Don't worry. You can blame it all on me.

The Goodbye Notebook

You were lost to me the first moment I set eyes on you. I just didn't know it.

There is a universe where we are together and there is a universe where we are not.

There is a universe where I stroke your hair and give you the sun;
you are happy but 

I am not.

I want the light of the cold blue moon to touch my heart


                   to be loved for my mind and nothing more; it’s okay 
to change your mind.

Analogy of Simile

It's like pain yet also unlike pain
It's like feeling yet also unlike feeling
It's like love and yet

The Endless Return

The Gardener 

 

by Rabindranath Tagore

 

 

An unbelieving smile flits on your eyes when I come to you to
take my leave. 

I have done it so often that you think I will soon return.
To tell you the truth I have the same doubt in my mind.
For the spring days come again time after time; the full moon
takes leave and comes on another visit, the flowers come again
and blush upon their branches year after year, and it is likely
that I take my leave only to come to you again. 

But keep the illusion awhile; do not send it away with ungentle
haste.

When I say I leave you for all time, accept it as true, and let a
mist of tears for one moment deepen the dark rim of your eyes.
Then smile as archly as you like when I come again.

Sick Rose

You are a cultivated rose; imprisoned

unaware of your hybridity. Or that you’ve lost

your sense

for sharp, painful beauty.

I am a cactus flower; tenuous

in my hard case of thorns. Impatient

for the night. 

in which I bloom.

Beneath the stars I stole for you.

Kiss me, Touch me, Feel me

Kiss me, touch me, feel me(lipshandseyessmilelaugh).

Tuck me into bed, listen to me, always tell the truth

let me have all of you, drop away your walls, give me the key, only
honesty.

Speak to me, run after me if I leave, never say “no," always say “yes,"
never stop dancing in the rain

Give me a million kisses a second

keep up.

No Second Tony

Lover, tyrant, hero-God, my Achilles
heel, cruel tiger, sweetest love,

Beautiful blue-eyed boy,

perfection,
cruelty
Sharp lines (lies)
A tongue

A curved
dagger.

A fatal flaw
pain from pleasure
inseparable. Glass
splinters

shattered inside all
succor
implied pleasure.

You will break
me a thousand
times over.
Save yourself.

just cut me open

leave me in peace
(pieces?)

which knife?

I, ritualized self-abuse
You, solitary vice

I, now you, a tyrannical beast
we don’t make it easy
the terrible things echo and crack
     gunshots
    in a mountain
        valley

Lethe

Lethe


Come to my heart, cruel, insensible one,
Adored tiger, monster with the indolent air;
I would for a long time plunge my trembling fingers
Into the heavy tresses of your hair;
And in your garments that exhale your perfume
I would bury my aching head,
And breathe, like a withered flower,
The sweet, stale reek of my love that is dead.
I want to sleep! sleep rather than live!
And in a slumber, dubious as the tomb's,
I would lavish my kisses without remorse
Upon the burnished copper of your limbs.
To swallow my abated sobs
Nothing equals your bed's abyss;
Forgetfulness dwells in your mouth,
And Lethe flows from your kiss.
My destiny, henceforth my pleasure,
I shall obey, predestined instrument,
Docile martyr, condemned innocent,
Whose fervour but augments his torment.
I shall suck, to drown my rancour,
Nepenthe, hemlock, an opiate,
At the charming tips of this pointed breast
That has never imprisoned a heart.

~ Charles Baudelaire

La Douleur Exquise

I always knew the end was nigh. I'd hoped otherwise, but I knew that was foolish. That way lies madness.

"Tell me about your lacerations," he said, flashing that deadly smile. I knew I was done for.

Ode to an Achilles Heel

The perfect masculine aesthetic:
6'2" eyes of blue
strong silent
type. Good
with mechanical device
or in the wild.

I was enthralled. Sybaritic.
I thought it was you
wrong spent
hype. Good
between my sheets
or in the wild.

Our first touch--synesthetic.
Dreamt in shades of blue
taste bud bent
hue. Typed. Bad.
In your arms
home and so much sad.

Something in the Way

O wild torrid consort, lurid breath of my beating breast,
Thou from whose unseen absence desire fled.
Lies cold, haunted like a ghost from our uncharted past.
I remember, afternoon sun bleeding gold, and hectic red,
Pushed and pulled, desire; refusal denied! O thou
Who chariotest to my dark wintry bed;
The winged perfection, the arrow, the blow.
Trumpet blast within its song a dirge, until
Trembling, motionless, I lie listening to
The clarion of the dreaming earth, and fill
Silent memory. Memorized perfection still.
Filled living, flesh and blood, smooth and frill:
Wild joyous which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!



* In imitation of Shelley's “Ode to the West Wind.”