Dancing in Character

A Confounded letter about her lost ghostly love.

 

Light enough for drawing now. A Winter birth and a Summer breath. Coming soon together in such a young life. Relationships that fed first in water, upending and duck head down dabbling.

The meeting and marriage of strangers and the finding of anything corporeal beyond sleeping together. The wishes of the heart that were paid for in certain collected rents. Deferred ambitions that were never laid to rest

Very young meetings in sunshine meadows followed years later by the leavings of feeling in stubble fields of rain. He was an artist friend in those days but not then the season's only lover.

Only when she finally came of age did the light youth feel as one within a group of Summer wishing. All was highest ever cloud and blue. Lights of palest gold sparkled crisp on her young blonde beauty. It was when all her refused learning was examined anyway. On the boards that her artist used for his drawings. When the ways of young men were always green and the tempestuous was rigourously sweet and forever final. When he first saw her. When he drew her.

It is too dark now

A warring lover is only hated after all these years. After the great sheen of blue mistakes and all the ruby red disappointments. After the skin lines had knotted deep and the lengths of roped hair had finally lost their added colour. Lustre that was only alive in shallow added cream skin. Autumn was aged in dark forgotten vats and nut cracked cast off's with nothing to help and nobody to listen.

It was then he came back, walking slowly and without the usual sunken pebbled ripples. When she found he was still drawing, she finally feared his lingering death. He said he wished to become her artist once more. Her clever drawn partnered peace. She loved his ghost pencil rough across her aged elastic thoughts.  His illed starred charcoal presence in the final fulfilment of her lack.

Yet the dead have no urgency. No pure pink juices flowing. There are no sweet hormones for those who are gone. No quick white streams of ambition. All anger and loves are lost simply in the act of going. Ghosts fail relationships forever. Hauntings can only hurt themselves. The dead cannot draw.

Author's Note

Changes in Tense are deliberate. The photograph is mine and is called Dancing in Character. It is Glen Coe in Scotland for those who are interested.

Reviews

[EMF]

Ken..... there are so many things to hate about you. You are a fantastic writer, a marvelous photographer and a really nice bloke. Which is why I can't bring myself to do it... but I'll work on it. This is exceptional work. But that's what I've come to expect when I look at anything of yours.

[Ken Simm.]

I can paint as well. (Show off, I know) But I can't make a decent sausage butty.

[Ken Simm.]

Oh and thanks so much for the wonderful words about the write.

[EMF]

Would you prefer predictable or honest. Either way it is a faultless example of painting a ticture with words.

[Ken Simm.]

From you I wonder, (in the nicest possible way) which is funnier? Then that's the one I want. Thats because I do take myself too seriously at times.

[jacob erin-cilberto]

i can't paint...but i can make a good "egg in a basket"!

[patricia]

Tight professional work. Amazing content. A cut above the average. Outstanding.
Wow.

[Ken Simm.]

Much appreciated Trish.

[SM Davis]

Ethereal. Vos mots balayer la page pour créer un moment arrêté dans le temps ... ésotérique ... crus .... belle.

[Pax]

wow, mr. Ken your words sparkles. a very hunting end..
awesome work!

[Ken Simm.]

Thank you so much for looking and liking my friend.

[Dean]

A prose poem is a formidable thing to attempt! You have tackled it by piling metaphor on metaphor, together with some very choice adverbs such as "duck head down dabbling" together with a reflective approach to a past event, real or imagined. That is epic writing to make one's head shake in amazement! I suspect the "he" referred to may be the narrator, but you disarm us enough to bring out the speculation without invading your domain. Quite a feat, Ken!

[Ken Simm.]

This is part of the Confounded Letters. Some memoir, some history, some romance. All the things that generally confound me. I'm glad you found it interesting Dean. Thank you.

[LA Lorena]

OH! Another splendid masterpiece from you. Does it ever stop? Have you ever written a real stinker, or are you not human and mortal like the rest of us?

Do you know what I like best about your work? One does not simply read you. They are transported. You pick up your reader and carry them to your imagination and they actually journey through your poetry and stories.

[Ken Simm.]

Actually now you come to mention it I do get itchy teeth and hairy palms at certain phases of the moon. Would you like a list of all my stinkers? I don't know what to say about being transported except a heartfelt thank you.

[paperdaydreams]

This is a beautiful piece of writing. The way you place words together and know just which ones to pick is incredible. I love is poem! :)

[Ken Simm.]

I like the idea of picking words. Thank you so much for being so kind.

[Marie Anzalone]

Perhaps it is because we bring too much to the table when we open our hearts to artists. They know too much, thye resonate too much. Maybe it is that the air itself liquifies around you, and you are so caught up trying not to drown that you forget ordinary mortals will never know how it feels to experience perfection. You don't need to go to the water, it comes to you. A still life captures the energy of the moment, a single day lives engraved in unspoiled perfection that later versions of you becoem bitter for looking at it. Or maybe, it is simple as what Frost said, "Nothing gold can stay."

This was lovely and challenging and made me go quiet inside and still... it resonated of great truth. Wonderful, wonderful work. I am glad I stopped by.

[Ken Simm.]

Cezanne said 'A moment in the life of the world is going by, paint it as it is.' A belated but heartfelt thank you.

[jacob erin-cilberto]

a prosy poem that brings us through changes in a relationship...this reminds me of the 60's...the writers, artists getting together...the love then turning to chaos, then to hate but then the being drawn back together both literally and figuratively..

and then either the death of one, or just the realization that it (whatever it was) can not be recaptured...it once was there, but was so misshapen with all that the two went through, that it is only a memory painted on a canvass or painted in words in a poem.

you are a joy to read.

jacob

[Ken Simm.]

I think it has always been so through all the schools of Art. THank you for your perceptive comment Jacob.

[Larry Dyson]

nicely summed up.."Ghosts fail relationships forever. Hauntings can only hurt themselves. The dead cannot draw."...what a thought..! ..Laury

[Ken Simm.]

Thank you for that Laury. Much appreciated. I accepted your Friends Request despite what WC said. So I will request you as a friend now instead. There was something of a glitch.

[Circe]

it's quite an experience reading this, allowing the words, the story to take its time to unfold, I like that you can look at the picture, the dark mountain ravines and find the moods from this piece inside the picture, that mist of something lost... home to the eagle who soars and searches.. the artist who's gone but is still drawing.... his ambitions never laid to rest.. creates an unsettling atmosphere, to me it's sort of saying not to fall in those haunting regrets.. the colours of contrast from youth to old age.. also noticeable... it leaves me to wonder what has passed in all that time..

[Ken Simm.]

I think you are one of the few who has seen from the outset, the connections between image and words. Thank you.