The Landscape of Three Small Words

It was never my intention to stay,

commitment being a masturbatory condition

I refrained from--a religious holdover

from all my years in the desert;

the abstinence of feeling anything for anyone

so deeply rooted I barely registered the tumor--

how black, bileful,

the shriveled streets emptying into the dark harbor

waters, rife with insinuations, bristled

whatever logic I considered reasonable.

The indeterminate design of those three small words

seemed too much to contemplate, bilabial

fricatives beyond the shepherd’s simplicity of my lips,

a port from which I’d never sailed.

The world I’d condensed

being self-contained

had no space for luggage

or need of a companion.

I ate my meals standing up,

a gastrointestinal smorgasbord

of the crumbs Marquez left

to tide me through the solitudes

spiced with a tipple of Malcolm’s

sloe Quauhnahuac eruption.

The thought of sharing never crossed my thoughts.

Though you, you little hummingbird

seemed unperturbed--

from the day you first perched

on my windowsill the idea

I needed tending kept you busy

tending to all the difficult bits

nestling would make mandatory--

until I couldn’t stand to live within the silence

of myself any longer.

Your bed became an oasis

I stumbled into, forty-odd

square feet of refuge

from the midnight creeps,

polyphonic couplings

that always seemed to end in a discordant yelp

of casual recriminations--

though this time the melody seemed sweeter,

nearer to the heavenly chords

the angels played before;

tumbling cylinders of a lock

laying down the slow

circling groove of Charlies

improvising.

And suddenly the impossibility of being with-

out became the unbearable cataclysm,

logic torn lotus of a life worth staying for.

Reviews

[W. Barrett Munn]

Well, I think you definitely hit your groove with this one. One of your best and that is saying a lot. The metaphors seem to flow naturally from a narrative told in metaphors.

Wow. Just a resounding wow.

Winston

[Ken e Bujold]

thanks Winston. this one is one i am quite happy about. very much in the groove as you say

[John the Baptist]

The speaker comes across as a self contained type, fearful of commitment. Yet the entire poem seems to be addressing someone who has somehow breached those defensive walls. The "little hummingbird" has made herself indispensable, so that now he cannot see life without her. Sometimes we do manage to find salvation, despite ourselves.

[Ken e Bujold]

yes we do John. the little hummingbird is indeed indispensable. and my island is so so much better for her being here