Break Maiden #10
This morning, I discovered that on the front page of poetryfoundation.org, they encourage you to "discover poetry" by browsing through certain "categories." The categories they list are "love," "weddings," "autumn," "sadness," "pets," and "funerals." While being grossed out by this, I happened to notice that there were six of these categories, so I decided to write a sestina using them as my end words. I changed "autumn" to "fall" because it was a little more versatile, and "funerals" to "death" for the same reason. It doesn't really find its feet until stanza 4, but from there onward I actually kind of like it.
--
Jacket Racket
The problem with books about love
is that they invariably end in weddings.
But spring will always turn into fall,
and bright blue bliss into dull gray sadness.
Loved consistently by only our pets,
we steel ourselves for death.
But the beautiful thing about death
is that it sharpens the blade of love.
When your darling caresses you, pets
your hair and whispers of weddings,
cherish your joy in the face of the sadness
that you will sweep from your doorstep next fall.
Adam and Eve found solace after the Fall
in each other’s hands. Living with death,
and work, and pain, and sadness
was possible because God also gave them love.
Mankind had not yet invented weddings
but they promised to feed each other’s pets.
Taking care of someone else’s pet
you’re like a stuntman, taking someone else’s fall.
You love her cat, but there will be no wedding,
and she will dig in the garden alone when it dies.
Because it was never really the cat that you loved,
but the way its owner smiled through sadness.
She would never speak of her sadness
but you knew it was there, because all of her pets
were named for the existential philosophers she loved.
Sartre the cat ate Camus the goldfish last fall,
and she wrote a story called “Death
Comes to the Little Castle.” It did not end in a wedding.
She always thought that weddings
were occasions for sadness
because they reminded her of death.
So you never could ask her, except about the pets,
and she accepted your help with them last fall
so maybe you will have to call this love.
She will learn to love something other than sadness
when she sees that fall is painted by more colors than death
and the pets start having weddings of their own.
--
Jacket Racket
The problem with books about love
is that they invariably end in weddings.
But spring will always turn into fall,
and bright blue bliss into dull gray sadness.
Loved consistently by only our pets,
we steel ourselves for death.
But the beautiful thing about death
is that it sharpens the blade of love.
When your darling caresses you, pets
your hair and whispers of weddings,
cherish your joy in the face of the sadness
that you will sweep from your doorstep next fall.
Adam and Eve found solace after the Fall
in each other’s hands. Living with death,
and work, and pain, and sadness
was possible because God also gave them love.
Mankind had not yet invented weddings
but they promised to feed each other’s pets.
Taking care of someone else’s pet
you’re like a stuntman, taking someone else’s fall.
You love her cat, but there will be no wedding,
and she will dig in the garden alone when it dies.
Because it was never really the cat that you loved,
but the way its owner smiled through sadness.
She would never speak of her sadness
but you knew it was there, because all of her pets
were named for the existential philosophers she loved.
Sartre the cat ate Camus the goldfish last fall,
and she wrote a story called “Death
Comes to the Little Castle.” It did not end in a wedding.
She always thought that weddings
were occasions for sadness
because they reminded her of death.
So you never could ask her, except about the pets,
and she accepted your help with them last fall
so maybe you will have to call this love.
She will learn to love something other than sadness
when she sees that fall is painted by more colors than death
and the pets start having weddings of their own.