coral and kiss

I’ve been reading poetry for the last two hours, and I’m doing so in a state far different than I normally would.

I usually bring such ceremony and form to my reading, to find a lighting, and a spot in time, and a spot in my chair where everything just fits, and I read and take it in, and I sort of float around. I think tonight is different, it feels grittier, heavier. I’m exhausted, I’ve been working out all day, stretching, exhausting myself, trying to get to a different place, to break through the cocoon wall and force it just a little further; six steps past sick paths, seventeen degrees south of midnight.

I read this line just now, and fuck, it clicked with me, and now I have something to write about. I’ve been kicking and punching all afternoon and evening, the mad child’s tantrum, and it hurts to walk and take deep breaths, and this line clicks in with my grisly visage, the worn out, punch drunk boxer, swinging at shadows with intent sans dignity.

from It Is Not The Beauty I Demand

13 These are but gauds; nay, what are lips?
14 Coral beneath the ocean-stream.

~ George Darley

Beautiful, no?  Consider the imagery?  The lips, the kiss, the oft-loved symptom seen for itself to be what it be: the side effect of the message – the pretty decorum and archway through and into love and soul.  Love the medium instead, this poem claims; the lie, the bittersweet and damned-to-die declarations instead.  The I love you that you sold your soul for.

I cannot, I sigh, but I would if I were to be.  I sink into the ocean-stream for the coral alone, I watch as it shapes and moulds the cool waters through it’s fingertips.  I watch as the water stirs it’s last, rushed past those painfully red lips, and settles into banality and formlessness.

My eyes aren’t grey enough and ready for such grey.

I think I’m finally realizing that there’s still colour left for me, red blood in my veins, in the wine-drenched kiss of the world.

And tears are coming to my eyes again, as I leave flowers at Hope’s emptying grave.

~ Driz

~ by drizitche on March 18, 2009.