Half-Life by Erica Jong

[evilangel_lib]

The rock I danced on
looked for all the world like the sea.
The sea was stone.

Your eyes were green
as wings of horseflies...
almost as unclean.

They buzzed around my head
like my own dreams.
They thickened the air with kisses.

When I was nine,
I used to kiss my pillow
on the mouth
after I'd licked it wet.
How else find out
what "soul kiss"
really meant?

"He puts his tongue
into your mouth."

I was amazed.

& yet our tongues are dancing
on the ocean.

Why does every fucking poem mention the ocean?
The swell of the great sea mother?
The water babies in thier amniotic fluid?
The sea salt taste of blood?

Love, blood - the flood of poems
as life creaks to a close.

The sky narrows to a point
as we make love.

This is a little death,
a pact,
a double suicide of sorts.

& I invent
tidal waves, atomic shocks,
the mushroom cloud of you
above the smoking chasm
that you leave in me.

Radioactive,
dangerous as stone,
you leave me bone dry, lonely in my cave.

I have compared you to the atomic war.

& your half-life will linger
when both of us
are gone.