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Quickened pace betrays my careful plans1
and a shiver crawls up my spine. I ought to have gone back, retraced my steps.
Awake at 9:32
A warm bath
A light dress, it's summerOut the door at 9:53
Down eight flights of stairs, the lift is broken
Out the door at 9:55
I ought to have gone back to the corner bakery and to another strawberry pie,
and miss the 10:05 train, the Brandenburg Gate, the night walk along the Spree.
And by now I'd be home, in our bed, sipping your lips and gliding down the surface of your naked body, tasting your skin, inebriated by the soft scent of your sex, the subdued song of your heartbeat.
But then the smoke, the melody, the overwhelming sense of possibility.
Even so, if only I had ordered my own drink,
if only I had steered the conversation back to the strum of the bass,
if only I had smiled and said goodnight instead of ever noticing the exact shade of light the rising sun makes against the ceiling of a 3rd floor in Friedrichstraβe,
if only,
I wouldn't be here now on this train station 50
kilometres north of Frankfurt, mentally writing to you.
But things, baby, things
have a perspective in Berlin and another in our hearts.
And everything is as easy as waiting
for the next train and finding the night in any
forgotten corner of a city.
I have a bowie knife and a pistol.
I will steal until the end of the world
just to find you. I will undoubtedly catch
the direct plane to L.A. and stand in the middle of the avenue
underneath the giant billboard of the movie theatre
where Providence was last shown.
I won't drink white wine until that day.
I'll eat your lips until they bleed.
I won't be arrested. I'll keep an extra bullet, concealed.
It will be at 5:45. It's your posterity.
Mine.
I'll untie me
from your cerebellum.2
1in "By Night's Sweet Darkness" by JUDO ©2003
2in "Still" by Cordelia ©2004
This poem was mentioned in the Archival Review thread, in a picking through Lit's archive of over 36,500 poems.
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but it works so well. I'm tough to pull in, and you got me, solidly, by the third line. Nice write!
'If only', If only...
It made me want someone so bad but was out of reach.
It made me wanting...
Beautiful, just beautiful,
O
On my quest to read and comment all of the challenge poems, I came upon this. I distinctly recall reading it before and not commenting on it. This time, I read it, shivered as my brain stretched, read the comments on it (even without yours, I wish I could have as many people comment on my work as they have on yours--if but for no other reason than the honesty)and then returned to it.
I'm not poetic enough to tell you how this poem moved me. Dendrites stretch and grew reading this the second and the third time. I honestly wish I had the words. I simply do not. It's just that good to me.
The juxtapositioning of precise minutes fixed in time against a large geographical landscape (including "any city") adds a beautiful eeriness to this lovely piece.
I look forward to becoming more familiar with your work.
You're still a genius. In fact, you're even more of one now if that's possible. I try every day not to hate you. ;)
The combination of prose and poetry here is stunning. It's a new direction for your voice that started with Stylization and I love it.
...and a clarification.
I think everyone is entitled to his or her opinion and to express it freely while remaining anonymous. By allowing public comments I was indeed asking for those opinions: all of them, and not only the positive ones.
I'm also aware that most readers at Literotica are the anonymous who remain silent and don't vote, so I would like to make clear that I do not subscribe to the position that they should keep away.
That being said, I also reserve the right to dismiss the opinion of anyone, anonymous or not, who simply says "crap" without articulating a single discernible reason for it. They don't bother me one way or the other, but I have more important things to think of.
Thank you all again.
You took the first line
"Quickened pace betrays my careful plans"
and just ran with it, some sheer moments of genius
some lines I don't understand.
***
Perhaps anonoass would like to explain his opinion, I set up a thread for such things.
is fascinating and intelligent, but this one part totally captured me: "I ought to have gone back to the corner bakery and to another strawberry pie, and miss the 10:05 train,"
I've had that same thought before--without the strawberry pie and 10:05 train, but the same, nonetheless.