Sonnets for Barbara

I.

It’s not just that I’m mesmerized
By all those swells and folds:
Her flesh, the wave of hip,
That long, white slide of thigh. There is
The faint scent of ginger blooming
On the red table of her lips, the break
In her eager voice, the tap and click
Of heels over terra cotta tile
As she meets me at the Tuscany for lunch.
There is all of this, and yet somehow
When submerged beneath the growl and wash
Of uncontrol over her body, no love
Abounds. For I am ever only ravenous
And one must always starve alone.

II.

She calls it play, this fight,
This frantic clash and race
To our two alien orgasms. I play
Because her sighs and humbled moans
Drag me from my own redoubt,
To which a long, stuttering fall
Into the dark release of Thanatos,
The confluence of Styx and Lethe,
Is where I don’t want to yet want to go.
In this emptiness, this waste,
We call each other’s name
In the Old Tongue, that ancient
Language of imperative, of need,
For that’s the one speech we both know.

 
III.

Over the rockfall of desire
Runs no clear path. One must leap
From boulder to wobbly boulder,
Taking care not to dislodge
Another stream of stone.
Occasionally, one finds a cairn
Or trace of laser-lifted tattoo that marks
The passage of an earlier traveler
Over the nervous talus and scree
Of her imperfect body. With luck,
These are the enigmatic runes
Left by some predecessor Saknussemm
That guide an intrepid Lidenbrock
Into the centre of her Earth.

IV.

This test betrays unequal wills.
To her, I am mere anecdote
That can be shared among her friends
For mild titillation, and to break
The boredom of an afternoon.
But my hands shake
Like an addict in withdrawal,
Removed from my once nightly touch
Of fine China White skin
And the needle of her unconscious cries.
This much is clear:
She can’t meet me, like, anywhere,
With my occluded, glassy eyes.
My steady rocking—always always on the nod.

V.

There is no wealth in love.
I cannot bank
The pleasures of her body
In some heavy steeled vault.
Her coin’s a joy that when once spent
Evaporates into the cool air of memory,
A cloud that ever dissipates
With time. There is no economic curve,
No equilibrium to reach
Somewhere Supply gives in
To the desperation of Demand.
And so I save what I can save:
Her signature, a photograph.
And then I touch myself instead.