Tuesday, November 8, 2016

Unfinished Song

"Face 198d"  © 2016 David Prashker
To listen to an audio recital of the poem, click here













All our lives we fumble in the dark
   like teenage lovers
      under cover of a midnight park
searching for what is never as we dreamed

scared as much of darkness as “the other”
   scared of our own indoctrinated guilt
      tormented by the phantom mythic beast
alleged to lurk beneath the lovers’ quilt
   or in priapic playfulness at least -
      yet who is never really so ferocious as he seemed

                                   *

Ayishah, I long to interpret the silence
   you weave about your absence
the coded messages inside your letters
   which confirm our deeper correspondence
the secrets of your hidden life
   untouched by circumstance

Ayishah
It is not true what they say
   about the heart growing fonder
Emotions wander
Opinions vary
In my case anyway
   absence makes the heart grow wary

                                   *

All our lives we torment ourselves with Love
     does she doesn’t she
          will she won’t she
The cry of need
     the cry of lust
          the cry of seeking seed
The cry of passion turned into disgust
     the cry of ultimate betrayal
The cry of laughter
     at the hindsight-understood naivety
          of happy-ever-after

And each cry sounding so much the same
     and still such difference
Each cry issuing from the selfsame vein
     of guilt and innocence
Each cry ending and beginning
     in the selfsame dream
  ending and beginning
       in a susurration
               and a primal scream

                                   *

I am thinking, Ayishah
     not of the first time
           but of the very first time

Of the sixteen-year-old girl I kissed
     when I was seventeen
in the days before sex
     had become enshrouded
          in mystery and taboo
days when love was not yet Love
     and you were not yet You

Nothing is more important than the very first time
     and every time
          should always be the very first time
for with each new relationship we enter
     we renew our own virginity
  render ourselves pure and uncorrupt again
       ready for the necessary violation of our innocence...

(no, today the poetry is not lucid; only the wound that engendered the need for poetry, bleeding, but incoherently)…

                                   *

Ayishah
     it has been too long
               our song remains unfinished
and I am stranded here
     longing to interpret the silence
          you weave about your absence
the coded messages inside your letters
     which confirm our deeper correspondence
the secrets of your hidden life
          untouched by circumstance

Ayishah
It is not true what they say
   about the heart growing fonder
Emotions wander
Opinions vary
In my case anyway
   absence makes the heart grow wary

Ayishah, please be kind to me
     the summer is almost gone
Seven years have I waited for thee
          seven years and then seven
               and now the long winter draws on




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All rights reserved
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