That last haiku quickly suggested two more - a haiku trilogy in honour of my love, The Poet, and the rather crazy nocturnal lifestyle she was leading me into during our brief, wild affair.
On our nights out together, we both tended to succumb to the rather bad habit of reflexively ordering one more drink (and another, and another, and another) as fuel for the conversation, a prop to keep ourselves awake, a pretext to stay out just that bit longer....
And so, I wrote:
"One more?" Always "One
More"! So I wait up all night
For the one first kiss.
It was a self-destructive way to live; yet the conversation (particularly hers; but there were many other interesting low-lifes we were hanging with also) always seemed to make it worthwhile. Hence this, the final part of the trilogy (which I think I may have posted on here before, a long time ago - but it bears repeating):
The talk is too good
To end; days later, I still
Hear it in my head.
I think this was the order I wrote them in, although I suppose logically - or chronologically - these three poems should perhaps stand in reverse order, as an account of that first night together. However, the second two were written some little time later, and all three of them seemed to have a continuing relevance - in no particular order - to every time we went out together.
2 comments:
ah, this is a universally felt experience - you've hit something here. sometimes you wake up the next morning and are still consumed with the talk of the previous night. other times, days will pass and while doing something so unrelated - washing dishes, researching an issue - a voice pops in your head - repeating the talk and your taken back to it again.
the other "one more" haiku is very like the comments I made at another time about one more cup of persian tea - not wanting the night to end.
The drinking, the waiting, the anticipation of kissing - it all blended into one for me, resulting in some very mixed feelings.
While we were out, she liked to give the impression that we were friends rather than anything more; and it often seemed to me that the all-night partying was partly an excuse to postpone intimacy - or avoid it altogether - because she still had some hang-ups about getting into a relationship with me. I often fretted that the late nights, the drinking were excessive; I often fretted that maybe I was never going to enjoy one of her exquisite kisses again. I put up with the "one more drink.... one more drink.... one more drink...." only in the hope of getting a kiss at the end of it. Usually I did.
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