Reclusivity of Silence

The reclusivity of silence alone in a room;
The woman on a white pedestal is naked and posing.
I don’t remember what I said to her,
But she is in agreement
That her body and affect are
The stuff of artistry.

A picture of a naked woman,

Not that we are there yet,

But this must be the arrangement,

Sets adrift so many passions.

Mystery is the biggest one,

Where I am lost in the design itself,

My attraction,

My mind-numbing infatuation with this character study.

Just as Picasso said:

He was only and always painting himself.

I am taking a picture of everything I’ve ever wanted

While actually wanting to know if the passion is shared

And what it might mean.

I sense she is only contemplating her appointment,

How the stool might not be that comfortable,

if the image would wind up on the Internet,

And some guy like me would find it.

She’s thinking about lunch,

Her studies,

Her boyfriend,

The cause of art,

The purpose of her life.

I don’t think that women ever

Think of themselves as objects of beauty,

As the purpose for living that men attribute to them.

But, they clearly stand for something,

Since I have no other thoughts.

I Fancy A Walk

I fancy a walk with a particular woman,

How her face comes gracefully over her shoulder.

It is the second time that she’s not said a word and

I continue to wait for her apology.

But, she still doesn’t get it.

She was in a relationship

When she wrote me

And I told her to do so when she was single.

Of course, I wrote back almost instantly

That it probably didn’t matter

But of course it did.

Relationships are about power

And that’s why she came to me.

She’d heard that I had broken it off with a woman

She’d known around work,

Who was completely destroyed by it.

She’d often talk about how a married man was a prize.

Not because he was someone she liked,

But that it represented a challenge.

I figured it was because she was taking him away from another woman.

I thought to myself,

How horrible.

My sins were committed out of actual desire,

For her, relationships were a game;

She drove me crazy.

She never apologized and then blamed me,

Like I was stalking her.

Except that I was visiting my mother the first time.

My mother lived just down the street from the gas station,

Where the two of us stood.

She rushed to finish her fill-up.

I must have smiled,

But inside I loved her

Inside, I was sad.

It was one-way.

She couldn’t see me

She couldn’t see anyone but herself.

Despite that I fancied a walk with her,

She would no longer have it,

Like I was some twisted creep,

Who was dangerous in my silence?

I was hoping she’d apologize to me,

But she didn’t.

“disarmed the sun”

A Paraphrase/Response to The Holistic Wayfarer’s poem “Disarmed the Sun,” posted Aug 9, 2013

My response to the poem

by The Holistic Wayfarer (See: http://aholisticjourney.wordpress.com/about/)

She must have breathed hard,
Red-shouldered
In the evening.
And you wonder about such women,
Who hope like this
As the rain fell for no good reason,
And the sun stared.
But, I wonder now as the decisive rain
Disarmed the sun, which grammatically
Stuttered, but did the rain not drench her
Or was it the sun, or did she smile both
Because of the disarming rain
And the staring sun?
By this image, I see no expectation,
But indulgence.
I see no men or women lovers
Or perhaps, a woman simply loves herself
In the in-between.
For beauty has a waiting list,
Which apparently
She is not conscious,
Or at least not interested.
May she always be free to choose
And not be burdened.