Rabbits

Lying like this, with my head in
somebody else's lap
rabbits popped into my head.
I know I should think about
sex, or weed, or what's
tantalisingly close to my lips -
isn't this a stupid thing?
You hated every second
dread pervading each twitch
of their ears
that constant rain.
I watched it twenty times
before I got up -
that's no exaggeration -
twenty times.

She's fallen asleep
reclined like that on the couch
and I'm content to doze here
to think of nothing
to stay my heart
to let my mind wander where it will.
It keeps coming back to this: how
different we were in that regard.
You never had any time for
that which you didn't understand,
and I'd think about anything
to avoid thinking about myself.

The girl above me snores, gently.
She can be a real b***h
when she's awake.
I know that
when she rouses herself
and we carry each other off to bed
and we make love
and we whisper poetry to
slaughter the silence
(that silence which yawns between us
like a promise)
lest we learn something,
it'll be those f*****g rabbits
and your perfume
that ring through my ears,
deafening me
making my stomach feel ill
until I write you
another poem you'll never see
and tell myself again that
happiness is a state of mind.

Reviews

[W.k.kortas]

Life its ownself is neither Cinderella nor Cruella de Ville--there is a mixture (and especially with women, praise God) that is both beguiling and maddening; as Billy Joel put it (albeit very broadly) "You can love 'em forever, but you won't like 'em everyday". This is along those lines, though certainly done with more layering and more subtlety; the woman that we f**k, well, like rabbits will snore and be bitchy as well. This is the stuff of real life, not gritty as such, but it rings true, and does so in an elegant and sensitive manner. This is first-rate stuff.