Concentric Snapshots

I.

Two new high school grads
our duet, playing at probing,
experimental love;

clumsily grasping
at the third rail,

illuminating our
respective darkness,
calling the freshly found
fool’s gold
love eternal.

II.

Victims of circumstance, we
circled the idea as
adults consenting at this
scandalous dispelling of intent, this
instinctive discontent

sucking at the plea; a need
we’d already met
in spirit if not deed, she,

splayed and braced
for our forbidden crossing,

forever eroding a
gold-pressed
promissory note
as false idol.

III.

Never bothered catching her name;
would’ve fumbled it away anyway
in the aftermath of two bored barflies
stalling to return to our respective
counterfeit lives, finding life and little
deaths pressed between, rubbing for wishes,
but granted only golden gilded-guilt.

IV.

Last night with her was…

last night was…

it was… have you ever

in all your
quarter-century-plus of life
been so sure of someone,

so secure in her warmth,
so open to your own vulnerability
so overeager to overflow,
to explode,

to lose containment of self,

spilling onto
and into her essence
until you forget
where you end
and she begins? Like… you know…

uhm… like two novice glassblowers
playing in molten golden sands,
you both know it’s real and urgent
and wonderful, and powerful and… and…

…and inevitably,
one or both of you
will still shatter it
once it cools.

Anyway,
it was like that
with her.

V.

There was something
within this sad, soulful
old-soul lonely eyes

that fleetingly
stole her soul
from her fiancé

for an afternoon delight
that never happened; that was
her story anyway after
entering a bachelor’s loser-loft,

asking for a glass of water
she never drank a drop of,
spilling it on the night-stand
next to her thirst and
a certain creaking
secret-spilling mattress

and I can’t say if anything
she moaned into my ear
was gospel, but truth is,

sometimes
seeking that golden sandy fullness
leaves us spent, wrought
with emptiness.

VI.

Neither of us
are in the mood,
molecules moving
a bit slower with age
and still,

catching me
admiring her hips,
she wiggles a spark my way,

igniting knowing smirks
encircling in decaying orbits,
concentrically spinning
towards collision

saying inflammatory things like,
“I thought you were sleepy?” and
“What you wanna do?”
with knowing grins,

knowing the answer
before it begins with
clumsy grasping of our third rail,
transmuting darkness into
golden hues.
***

Written for dVerse Poetics: Desire and Sexuality in Poetry, guest hosted by Anmol Arora (HA).

Initially, I was going to skip this one and just exist within my depression for a minute, but then I began reading everyone’s steamy contributions, and as Bjorn predicted, I became inspired for some reason. *heh*

Passion and sexual desire are often their own reward, but I thought it might be interesting to examine the fact that often these desires don’t exist within a hermetically-sealed bubble. Sometimes indulging is great and the circumstances wonderful, and sometimes the whole sultry exercise may be wrought with symptoms of a deeper need.

No judgments here! Lord knows I’m not qualified to judge anyone. I just thought it might be interesting to play with circumstances.

I enjoyed writing for this prompt. It pulled me from my doldrums for a bit. 🙂