On a stoop in Secaucus April 11, 2013

  

I ache for something more than love as I sit on a stoop in Secaucus, New Jersey, in a summer-like swelter in early April, weeks of winter suddenly whisked away to reveal the soft curved air and the hubbub of traffic hungry to find relief.

My mouth thirsts for a sip of wine I don’t allow myself to drink, already drunk on imaginary drink, sobered by the fact that I might never get to taste that grape again, or love, or the kind of love most people think of as love.

Instead, I am drunk on these crumpled print out of poems I read over and over again, until they are as dog-eared as my old notebooks, pages rich with pain and pleasure, each word a stroke across my back, a slap across my face, to which I keep returning, a glutton for something that I should hate, but can’t, pages rich with wisdom I can comprehend but lack inside myself, each word thick with love’s nectar, although again, not love as lovers might have it, but a love of language and life.

Each poem lets me a little deeper inside the poet’s mind, so I stumbled through this strange landscape, learning as I go, as much about myself as the poet, cringing over this passage, jealous over another, lover’s nectar dripping off the tip of my tongue as I read some aloud, each passage making me ache for more, craving the next poem and the next, even when they clearly mean something other than I want them to.

And I am like a man strapped to a whipping post, waiting with longing for the next stroke, the pain coming now when the lash comes, but when it doesn’t.

 

 


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