What makes this genuinely: What makes this genuinely moving is the magnetic pull between two opposites who turn out to be one soul on the same journey of acceptance and fulfillment. In spite of great opposition and high-stakes disapproval, love finds a way and becomes something unbreakable, enduring, even sublime.
A tender, deeply touching story with a strong sense of place and time. Always a pleasure to read these additions to your series.
Here, nature and love-making: Here, nature and love-making are so breathtakingly entwined that this fine-crafted poem becomes a living thing. Authentic, unleashed and blissful. Amazing work!
This little gem truly rocks!: This little gem truly rocks! The sensuality, made palpable with serpentine movement and beguiling images, is intense and astonishing. The wordplay: cunning. The entire creation: a huge success.
Respect and applause!
One hundred percent: One hundred percent agree!
With agility, clarity and wisdom, you gave the enlightened minority permission to guard their energy from emotional vampires; to prioritize authenticity and inner peace (and the reason we are in this world to begin with) over superficial, toxic relationships that may be in their own families. Then the path to "become/ who you are meant to be" is much smoother.
Very liberating and empowering guidance with a title that is a poem itself. Pure gold! Just can't praise this enough.
When something weighs this: When something weighs this heavily upon your heart, you should pay attention and follow where it leads. As for me, I will continue to read and enjoy your poems no matter what name is at the end of them. God bless.
Thank you for allowing me to: Thank you for allowing me to comment, and I apologize both for the delay, and for the "venue" in which I find myself. Today is Orthodox Palm Sunday, and although I must celebraye Christ's entry, into Jerusalem and toward His Death, from the confines of this bed, rather than at my Church, I am grateful to still be alive for this.
I am glad you liked the reference to Saphho, and, believe me, you are every bit as important.
I appreciate your candid and: I appreciate your candid and evocative take on my work. I like to think of PostPoems as a safe space for various opinions, viewpoints and modes of expression, and yours are certainly welcome here.
Thank you for your thought-provoking, honest and compelling review.
I'm so sorry to hear you're: I'm so sorry to hear you're still in the hospital. Sending you an abundance of positive thoughts and prayers.
Brilliant Poet and Scholar, I can always count on you to appreciate and mine the depths of my expressions, and truly, it is an honor just to know that you've taken the time to read my work. Your coveted reference to Sappho (who wrote some of the most volcanic words of all time) is beyond gratifying, and I never tire of your capitalization of the word "poetry".
And being cantankerous can be an admirable, well-earned trait when it means endearing honesty and free-spirited rebellion against unreasonable norms. So be as uninhibited and outspoken as you want!
Take care of yourself and thank you kindly for your wise perspectives.
I am sorry for a delayed: I am sorry for a delayed response to this poem: I am writing this from a hospital bed. Also, unlike the other comment here, I think I czn manage to make a point without recourse to the F-word.
I am going to be radical (sometimes being so is fun), and even be a cantankerous old man (which I have been since I was give years old) and suggest that this poem is not as much a cosmic poem (in keeping with Patricia's other poems), but a cleverly and cosmologicsllly disguised poem about writing Poetry, and the purpose of Poetry. Wallace Stevens often slid a poem abouot poetry into the mix of his stuff; the self-aware poem has been with us a couple millenia.
Like some of the ancient Poets, I think particularly of Saphho, Patricia asks rhetorical questions, and then causes the poem to provide the answers to these questions. This is a process that is inherent in all of her poems; it is why one can cay that she writes Poetry, and not poetry. Her poems, in explaining the Cosmos to her readers, also explains the Cosmos to itself.
charming abused women: Moon with her sail full of myths,
trickery and slippery hope,
moon in a fever of insomnia,
charming flaws and
half-hearted,
grainy light,
beautiful and broken
like the world it
spills into . . .
This sounds like the perfect fuck medicine, that a lot of women offer up from their astrological calculations. I’ve always been enamoured by astrological women – especially in the beginning. But after the honey-moon phase of fucking for six or seven months, you always make the discovery that they are deeply flawed.
And a great many of them, despite their beautiful physical form – have been deeply abused at some point in their past. And they tend to want to relive their anal sexual abuse, which always comes out at some point in conversation – around the sixth or seventh month.
And as a front-door kind of guy, that kind of thing always comes to me as a warning sign. And I think to myself – why do you want me to fuck you in the ass?
It screams out to me – Damaged Goods – Something is very fucked-up here.
That said, I’ve obliged from time to time, but it’s not my go-to thing. And I always feel absolutely disgusted with myself afterward.
I feel disgusted – not from the act, because the act in itself is alright – if it comes spontaneous and natural.
But I feel disgusted – because I allowed myself to become a peg in a hole – to be drawn into her endless fantasy of reliving some abusive moment of her past.
And I feel like I am extending that abuse into the present, by helping her to relive it.
And that’s when it finally comes to me, that there’s nothing I can do to help this person… so long as she is intent on reliving her abusive past… be it by drawing me into it as an actor… or whiling me with her smiles… or persuading me by her honey-talk.
And they always tend to be incredibly persuasive… even if you run into them two or three years later, in the very bar that you initially met them.
And if you happen to fuck around with them again, they always draw you back into the same old trip.
~/~
It’s in your blood:
No matter what, keep writing… it’s pure medicine. It has kept me going more times than I can count. And I’m sure that’s true for a whole lot of people who write. It’s a form self medication. And it can right the course of our ship more often than not. So keep with it. You've got a clear expressive quality. It’s in your blood.