World Fantasy: Half Asleep in Blog Pajamas
I fell in love three times, in just three days!
I said, to the woman with red hair, who smiled
and asked, Who with? as if it were a simple question
Oh! all three clever men, each weirder than the last
and all three wildly inappropriate - I assured her, concerned
that she might pity me the burden of my ardor:
It doesn't last too long, don't worry, these are five-minute affairs
the rhyming kind, secret, unreciprocated, gladdening
And then she laughed and said, That isn't love at all!
But privately I beg to differ
It was real enough, real as a match struck in the dark
Real as a meteorite on a bleak midwinter's night
A fiery streak of real.
***
Next, I want to write a poem about the pack of us
How we moved like Maenads through the Labyrinth at Sheraton
How Sheraton sounds like Charenton, a little
How the haunted elevator shook like our nervous fingers
Until, propitiated by brownies and molasses cookies,
We all calmed down - and oh, the sounds of the banjo
And oh, the leaves in her hair, and oh, how she sat, half-naked
On the mattress and played her harp for us
The sequins and the glitter we abused, the rhinestones and the lace
How we flounced and flaunted our festivity
To hide our insecurities
How much we all missed this, each other,
Well before it ended
Really, from the moment we met.
***
***
I said, to the woman with red hair, who smiled
and asked, Who with? as if it were a simple question
Oh! all three clever men, each weirder than the last
and all three wildly inappropriate - I assured her, concerned
that she might pity me the burden of my ardor:
It doesn't last too long, don't worry, these are five-minute affairs
the rhyming kind, secret, unreciprocated, gladdening
And then she laughed and said, That isn't love at all!
But privately I beg to differ
It was real enough, real as a match struck in the dark
Real as a meteorite on a bleak midwinter's night
A fiery streak of real.
***
Next, I want to write a poem about the pack of us
How we moved like Maenads through the Labyrinth at Sheraton
How Sheraton sounds like Charenton, a little
How the haunted elevator shook like our nervous fingers
Until, propitiated by brownies and molasses cookies,
We all calmed down - and oh, the sounds of the banjo
And oh, the leaves in her hair, and oh, how she sat, half-naked
On the mattress and played her harp for us
The sequins and the glitter we abused, the rhinestones and the lace
How we flounced and flaunted our festivity
To hide our insecurities
How much we all missed this, each other,
Well before it ended
Really, from the moment we met.
***
***