The poetry of this moment starts with a look, a glance... Up then down. Then embarrassingly to the side. "Hello. It's so very nice to see you again" I say. It is much like that moment when one sits down to write a poem. One never knows what one is going to do. One starts to write and then it becomes something quite different. "Have a seat" she says, while simultaneously standing in defiance of what appears to be vulnerability.
And her beauty... evokes aspects of both sight and spectacle. If I were a painter I would have sought to capture it in a sketch. But as in painting, so is poetry. So I sat next to her trying to juxtapose her beauty with what was obviously a paralyzing pain she was attempting to hide.... Or maybe she wasn't. An artist always must always start from reality, unless of course the "reality" being presented is an attempt to disguise reality. Then an artist must go deeper.
I look but try not to stare... And my words are not as good as a painting, though they are painted - my pen acting as the paintbrush , each word written with with the ashes of something set ablaze and destroyed before I arrived. Each thought a surrogate sculpture. I've always been good at capturing the essence of weeping women. But this type of writing is stronger than me. It makes me do what it wants. And right now it's forcing me to capture the breaking of her heart. Observation and possession....
So I sit next to her... dipping my pen in tears... to express the painful idea that there's no pleasure without fear... And she mumbles something like "My heart is a tragedy of war"... and I whisper "My art seems to always want more".... She smiles at the physicality of my words... and then "crawls like a worm from a bird".
And then silence.
Because we both know this type of art was not meant to hang in rooms...
I look at her before finishing my drink. She asks me what I'm thinking... I smile, and say "Later when this you see remember me."
Ab imo pectore.
