How to Write a Love Poem and Not...

…when I wrote this,

     there were magnolias, oaks and

     tire-jacks.

The landscape littered the horizon

     in the same fashion

     a horrible honker litters

     a pretty face.

Not your face.

Not your nose.

Your nose is beautiful, hooked and

     curved, or straight

     and leonine, doesn’t

     make a difference.

It’s not your face, it’s not

     your landscape, it’s my

     horizon, the one I’m writing

     today to arrive at tomorrow

     or next month.

That story?  The one I told you?

About the troll, the katydid

     and Friar Tuck?

Complete imaginative whimsy.

And I’m only now confident 

     enough in my abilities to mention

     that pencils and erasers, as medium,

     are the blank paper’s best friend.

I am not, never was, never will be

     the troll at the gate.

And the katydid, actually,

     was a katymay.

She may.

But probably won’t.

She’ll be busy.

She’s got things, a list,

     an agenda, a PIM and

     a lovely grass-covered

     planner.

She’s got hair, nails

     and personal maintenance

     levels that must be upheld.

It’s just as well.

You didn’t really want her to, anyway,

     did you?  Because you know,

     well, not know but you know

     what I mean when I scribble

     because you know, anyway, you do know

     that that’s not how the story

     turns out.

By the way,

     in case you’re wondering,

Yes, it is probably time

     to reintroduce the tire-jacks

     from the second line.

Their appearance in this poem,

     and all subsequent poems,

     well, any poem, really,

     is so odd, so attention-getting

     that you have to wonder

     if oddity and attention

Is not their sole reason

     for existence.  They’re hardly

     beautiful, like you,

     they’re not metaphors

     or analogies (yet),

Simply blemishes on the landscape,

     placed

     in a skiff beyond their means

     or ends.

Probably not unlike the writer

     of this next horizon

Although now it seems we’re far away

     from where we were headed

(it always seems as such, lately,

     we think A, we get B, 

     we’re confident of J, 

R’s where we’re left):

Is this a love poem

     or just the image of a love poem

     or worse,

     the memory of a love?

How do you keep 

     what you’ve never had?

What business do bridges have here?

Even if the katydid receives passage

     from Friar Tuck and escapes

     the clutches of the troll,

Why is there a rock placed just so

     in the stream under the bridge,

     in otherwise idyllic circumstances,

     upon which she can break her head

     if she falls?

And shut up, okay, about the sexism.

Maybe the katydid is a he

     and the troll is a she.

Maybe it goes that way.

Maybe the writer sees himself as

     the pursued not the pursuer,

     the katydid not the troll

When it probably would be more natural

     for you to think of me

     as the grimacing troll

     chasing what amounts to

     an anthropomorphic grasshopper

Dressed as Fata Morgana

     or some such.

Maybe, even,

     we, you and I, are escaping

Such easy classifications

     and you know (know) that I see

     myself as Friar Tuck, giving

     quarter to those in need, or

Or

     or

     we’ve gone even beyond that point

     and you know that the writer

Thinks that you think

     that the writer sees himself

     as the bridge to cross

     or maybe the stream to cross over

Or worse, the rock upon which

     to fall.

So much for the majestic quality 

     of poetry.

All of this is wrong, of course.

I say of course because if it were right

     the poem would be over, done,

     and this postscript would be 

Wholly unnecessary.

But you know this.

You’ve already guessed

     the denouement.

You’ve brightly watched the trajectory

     of the plot, have picked key

     symbolic elements to focus

     your attentions upon

And you recognize trickery

     when you see it.

You know pencils to be homonymic metaphors.

You get the eraser as female genitalia.

You’ve seen the self-depreciative

     commentary before and you know it 

To be an illusion.

It’s gone too far now or

     now it’s too far gone

     to try to wheel in a gurney

     full of fixes and cures,

Pat endings or subtle allusions

     to the works of masters

     gone before

     even if, even though

     the tire-jack was a simple homage

As was the magnolia,

The oak and Friar Tuck.

Today is the day I leave 

     all of that behind.

I take it all back.

Every kind or hurtful word

I’ve said, written or thought

     is but the leaf of the magnolia,

     piled in a heap for composting.

I’m going blank, leaving

     pencils and erasers

     and reams of papers

     uncollected

     to the trolls and to the tire-jacks.

They can have them all,

     my awkward misplaced children,

And I will stay here, clutched

     and held,

     besmirched by a horizon

I created when I created

     the landscape of you

Because you know, you know,

Memory serves no 

     keep in love.

©2006/12 – Mark A. Douglas – All Rights Reserved