I haven't posted any poetry of my own for a while (well, apart from the weekly haiku, which seem too small to count, really). The reason, I fear, is that I have been too busy - or too depressed or too 'uninspired' - to write anything for the past few months (well, apart from the blogs, which don't really seem to count either).
So, I've dug this out of my archives for you. One of my more frivolous things - inspired, I think, by one of my Charles Bukowski 'phases'; and probably also by some ruminations on the French expression petit mort.
the important things?
life and sex
are a lot alike:
generally POPULAR
and almost obligatory
yet somehow never
quite as much
fun
as one would wish
perhaps because
we are distracted
by the constant effort
of trying not to come
trying not to die
but of course
we do come
and always too soon
and we will die
too soon
and maybe
that is the point
and maybe afterwards
there will be
peace
6 comments:
thanks for the poetry. indeed it had been too long. You convey disappointment and tiresome efforts followed by some hope that disappointment and tiresome efforts will eventually be replaced by something better and ever-lasting. The ending certainly changes the flavor of the poem... it could have gone in quite a different direction. Is this a reflection of your hope? Oh, yes, you do claim to be an optimist... so perhaps, perhaps.
No, it's basically another suicide poem. The French - apparently - refer to orgasm (or the post-orgasmic torpor?) as a "little death". Hence, the idea of the poem is that the only real peace we can expect is after death.... and thus it can't come soon enough.
It is a reason for the French to be proud of their language that it has developed such expressions as "petit mort." Sex and death are tided up and so often "ruminated" upon that I don't see how the English language has managed to not to evolve an equivalent (unless I am forgetting something obvious I don't believe there is such an English expression.) So we are left with the challenge to tackle it with something wordier.
Thank you for digging this up!
I want to encourage you but then I'm NOT an advocate of suicide so instead I dearly hope that you will keep on "trying." And after all loss of control could be a peaceful pleasure?
call it a suicide poem all you want. I will see in it what I want. this is the privilege of the reader.
anyways, i need to clarify that the "something better and everlasting" that I referred to was death. To me, it's obvious in this context that the only "everlasting" thing is death. And death brings with it a relief from the frustrations of this world and hopefully some reward (if we've been good).
but, i probably injected into this poem way more religious notions of life as a struggle and death as deliverance than you imagined. like i said, privilege of the reader.
The quiet of the grave was the only "peace" I had in mind.
"The grave's a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace."
Darn it! I just commented here but the internet crashed and it was lost. Apt really. But (again) briefly,
I enjoy the inevitability in your poem.
We will all find out one day if what we believed in life is true in death. Strange how this question/your "maybe" reaffirms my desire for life.
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