DEAR YOU A MEMOIR WITH POEMS

WADE STEVENSON

B L A Z E V O X [ B O O K S ] Buffalo, New York

Dear You: A Memoir with Poems by Wade Stevenson Copyright 2015 Published by BlazeVOX [books] All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without the publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews. Printed in the United States of America Interior design and typesetting by Geoffrey Gatza Cover Art by Jane Stevenson First Edition ISBN: 978-1-60964-224-2 Library of Congress Control Number: 2015944262 BlazeVOX [books] 131 Euclid Ave Kenmore, NY 14217 Editor@blazevox.org

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He who loves, flies, runs and rejoices; he is free and nothing holds him back. Henri Matisse Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire. Roland Barthes

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HER BREATH IS NOT MINE Her breath is not mine Our relationship is warm and sharp and jagged Glass shards under water The way the sweet birds fight and kill each other Or a garden faucet drips unnoticed And the days do not repeat themselves The time we could be close is forever disappearing In the distance, a shadow we cannot grasp Her hands soap the beauty of her body A lathery storm bursts loose I peek down the hallway and watch An intruder in my own house, A leftover phantom of other glories That seem certain never to repeat themselves A chilled bottle of pale Sonoma gold Calls from the refrigerator I gulp it down in the darkness, Take a long pee soon after that. The long summer evenings are dangerous, So much time to think and remember In the morning the sun will probably rise, Ill shuffle downstairs naked, stubbly, and squint Into the garden where the birds are resting After their murderous adventures, And the light is calm, warm, touching all things Equally with the same indifferent pleasure. My three year old daughter is calling, Mommy, Wake up time? Wake up time? She wants to begin, And certainly it is always easier to begin than to end, The endings are the most difficult,

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And a kind of art unto themselves, but I turn away As a black youth ambles by down the exact middle Of the street, in the old days I too knew how to gallop On a bicycle and make straw-haired girls crazy with Laughter and something else, but now Im happy to check My email and survive another day without Undue hassles or extra stress, seeking in theory At least, a point of perfect balance and harmony.

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THE STRANGENESS OF LOVE Its strange how you were the woman Who came to love me. Its only for a season, and then Ill go. Its strange how one love Begets a net of memories There often is no rhyme or reason. Its strange the way you loved me And didnt love me. This is not about love. Its strange how you wanted me, Then let me go. This is not about love. Its strange how you made me cry Even when I thought I didnt care. But this is not about love. Its only the architecture of desire What happens when one lets ones heart Be burned, consumed by the physical fire.

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EVEN THE DEAD CAN FEEL I cannot touch her. Her body is not mine. If looking could possess, Then she would belong to me through my eyes alone. But my eyes are useless. They can only see What cannot be touched. I can breathe as much as I want. I can inhale the light and the air. I can walk out into the garden and feel the space, All the sky on my upturned hands. She wears a white slip. One side is hitched up. It reveals a streak of her thigh. I want to touch but cannot. She does not belong to me. But what we live is never ours. Even in the depths of passion There is a meaning that flees, Or rather, that cannot be held onto or defined, Only cherished in a certain perspective of time. It takes time to sort things out. It takes time for the wounds to stop burning. They say even a dead man can feel the bullets, That is why it is better not to touch the dead, Just leave them alone. Stay away. Find your own space and practice simple things, Like inhaling and exhaling, Living with your lungs, dependent upon nothing But the rhythm of yourself.

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I tried to touch her but she said no. I grabbed her but she turned me away. Kisses were of no use, and sweet words were rejected Before the first utterance. How to describe it? A stunned Shattered silence, finger scratching a head, Nail against a scalp. There are always two choices: You can be safe or risk Letting the heart beat wildly. I sit on the john and ponder my fate. Remember how the bedsprings would creak When you would press against me, urge me to Continue with feeling. Why are we born with such longing? Why does longing Possess us to the point that it burns within us And there is no release? At precisely 7:30 I managed to relieve myself, Another good deed accomplished. Its nice to have a certain Normalcy to be able to fall back on in the midst Of flight turbulence. If my head were a windshield, Id like to poke my hands through it Just to make a hole. Im the type of guy whos willing to wait In some romantic illusion that his girlfriend Will show up, when its clear she never will.

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Without hope, there is nothing. With hope, All things become possible. There is the chance I could touch you again. There is the chance I could caress your lips with my fingers, Slowly pry them apart. You might decide To throw your arms crazily around me, Pull me down into you and kiss me as if It were the first time, and Id be sure to light A candle in the corner, put on Acqua di Selva cologne Before rubbing my skin against yours, seeking To sync old longings with the thrust of new desires. Yee-haw! You would holler in joy. Ride em, Cowboy! You would laugh. The good times would roll, The phone would ring forever with no one to answer. I would sweep you around from side to side So that you lost your famed sense of compass direction. We would give back what was given to us, Share together in the beauty we were born with. The underlying facts are as inescapable as The solidity of concrete in a vacant parking lot: Her breath is not mine. Her body does not belong to me. The clock ticks in a circle and it makes No difference, night morning or morning night And noon because she knows what she doesnt want, Knows all about the barriers and obstacles, And is willing to pronounce the word, Never. At exactly 7:30 I manage to relieve myself, It is comforting how simple gestures can reattach you To the warm continuity of life. But without hope there is nothing. Without the body there is no spirit. Without touch there is no feeling.

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All you can hope for is peace, The weary satisfaction of growing old, The gradual release from desire, freedom from emotional Links, needs, wants, and the sufferings they entail. I want to be the happy hitchhiker on the road to nowhere, With nothing in my pocket but a dream and a song. A long time ago on the road to Spain, that girl and I, Springing out of a field I will cup Your absent face in my hands and kiss The memory of you slowly. Rain drums down On the patio terrace, and I hang around, Time on my hands and nothing to do. The body is meant to be touched. Lips are designed to be kissed. Sex is engineered for entry as seagulls are crafted To swoop down and seek life-giving fish. I want to believe things will get better. Love will come, Burst open like a bomb, and solve most of our problems, For sure. Its while shes asleep that my rage Builds to a fiery crescendo that has no place to go But to collapse hopelessly upon itself, an inert reminder Of its own impotence. The idols of desire Have no obligation to smile back or even to wink, Acknowledging some collusion. Why are we born with such pain? Why in the midst of such Beauty is there always the fissure Of such loss? Loss, pain, and the hole That was punched in the various fragments you believed in. The cops came running, They did it with an axe or a stone. You are pretty today and more beautiful than the day Before yesterday and the day before that too.

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I am content to sit and watch you moving around naked As you perform your morning ablutions. Soap, as you rub it, Always become smaller, but I try to hold on to The little bit that has been given me that can be called mine. Strange, how the TV is allowed to drone And CNN or Sixty Minutes can end up replacing A relationship. Some other time we will talk. Some other time we will sit, sip coffee, have clever Interesting things to say to each other. But tonight You move evasively in the shadows, careful To stay four feet away from any possible gesture. Lets go out to dinner. Lets have a bottle of French wine. Lets get drunk and see what happens afterwards. Haha! What a joke, as if frozen chicken breasts Could somehow be mistaken for the real thing! I want to watch you with the rod of my longing Rising up and making me nervously alert To every subtle vibration you might emit. Then, when youre in the kitchen, Ill tickle The hair in my nose and crack a half-smile At the beauty of what might have been And still could be perhaps if the beauty of the body Were not condemned to such uselessness by the inveterate Way you turn your head and staring at me with your cool Dark unwavering eyes, voice No.

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Your breath is not mine. The beauty of that body cannot be violated, Remains more precious by virtue of its inaccessibility. The stone slabs are warm and rough, the callouses On my hands grow hard from the effort of rowing This single scull forward. There is no applause, or Trumpets in the distance, but black bats Circle overhead and remind us The time we thought would last forever Is now finally going to run out.