51. The Joys and Tears of Love and Passion (3)



This is the third and final posting of the poems in The Joys and Tears of Love and Passion. 

The previous two posts are:

                     1. Love and Passion (Blog 22, 4 January 2012)

                     2. Separation and Loss (Blog 40, 15 March 2012)

Reconciliation and Renewal

Nietzsche, Teacher of the Eternal Recurrence

Waiting for Myself

Laughing Lions Must Come!

Little Fingers

Fresh Songs

Pax

In Avoidance of Married Women

Ahipara

Images and Moods

That Word Love

Dreaming Again

Fingers Touch

Regeneration

Somedays

            Why do I love you

           

______________________________________________________________

NIETZSCHE, TEACHER OF THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE

everything dies and blossoms again

everything breaks and is joined anew

everything parts and greets afresh

in every now being begins

WAITING FOR MYSELF

so for now

I am the guardian of memories

the night watchman of love

keeping faith with the past

fuelling the fire

to brave the winter’s chill

nourished on ambrosia

and the angelic grimaces of life

past memories before me

enriching not shackling

I wait on myself

and on the return of spring

fruit that is not picked

turns rotten and brown

falls away

breathing the odour of dusty eternities

but the tree will blossom again

to laugh in the summer sun

 

LAUGHING LIONS MUST COME!

I am but the man I am

sometime weary

sometime sad

sometime crooked and misshapen

wicked dwarfs crouching on my tongue

wanting consideration

swallowed up by solitude

but I am that man too

forged in the smithy of life

hammered right and straight

perpendicular in body and soul

broken from the cast of solitude

needing no consideration

ready for the roll of the drums

a warrior fit for the war

biting a brave lip

unshouldering past burdens

done with cries of distress

abandoning inexorable silences

facing forceful questions

I am free to give

my little finger

my whole hand

my heart too

to a welcome guest

tall

resilient

resurrected

fired by tenderness

the strong will of love

makes dim eyes bright

and spirits sportive

the laughing lions are loose

and I can be

the man I am.

 

LITTLE FINGERS

trying the temperature of the water

with little fingers

does not commit

to a Cook Strait swim

but it may encourage

a refreshing and joyful plunge

in a still sunlit cove

 

FRESH SONGS

brushing off dust and debris

and the spiders of despair

breaking through twilight shadows

and storms of negation

I stand naked before the sun

curing my soul with fresh songs

crowded and pressed by happiness

drinking strong wines of wisdom

back on the path that has heart

singing till the seas are silenced

whether you listen or not I will sing

it is such a beautiful folly

 

PAX

From here on in

No more apologies

For what we were

Or might have been

Let recriminations

Lie there

Recognised

But at rest.

The past is past

Irredeemable

Irreproachable.

 

IN AVOIDANCE OF MARRIED WOMEN

we are not islands you or I

we do not come like Last Tango*

without histories, the resonances of relationships

without obligations, responsibilities

self-images and self-respects

the internalised expectations of others

no matter how hard we may wish

how hard we try

we are our pasts and our futures too

if it were just you and I

in an island bubble

we would be free, adrift,

happy perhaps for a while

discovering ourselves alone

but our contract is limited

by time, by place, by circumstance

how can we be free when so constrained

when spontaneity is touched by dread and fear

and secrecy feeds on guilt and guilt on secrecy

I have little stomach for such ‘affairs’

and fear their consequences

“How do we live tomorrow?”

must colour how we live today

frightened by passion

fearful of the sterility of the passionless

wishing to love

yet fearing to say I love you

I will not let

the abstract desire

be particularised here in you

AHIPARA

What is it I fear

When I fear to say

I love you?

Trading devalued currency?

My love no better than pulp romance

Of the common crowd,

A grain of sand blown in the wind?

Is it that I fear –

Pulp romantic me?

Or do I deal a commodity

I do not have,

Cannot live,

As strange to me

As bird flight, fish swim;

Looked upon yet unseen

Copy-proof?

Or rebuff I fear?

Is that why I barter so

Swapping postage stamps

Like for like

A fair exchange

Waiting your opening bid

To manoevre my advantage?

Or can I live the thought

But not the action?

Do I fear

To threaten fantasy

To face the inrushing tide of consequence

Combing my beach clean?

Or is it that I do not love you?

But what I feel I feel I think

Why else so seek you out

Yet fear to speak my mind,

Tittle-tattle in embarrassed silence?

Why else my poem piece –

Or is that too to remain unseen

Unlooked upon

Locked on the ocean floor?

What is it I fear

When I fear to say

I love you?

IMAGES AND MOODS

I see you through the window window

Barriers apart

Beyond reach

So near, so far

My spirit searches out, seeks out,

Conscious of your world.

In the same house, untouching

Repressing the feeling to the page

Trading in trivia, the price of honey,

The yield of cows…

Peace

Peace

Is the knowledge not sufficient

End in itself,

Why then possess, devour?

Or is freedom only for captives?

THAT WORD LOVE

I know I feared the word

And with much cause

But there were moments

Flashes

When

Just briefly

I did love you

Touched your soul

From the heart of me

I would that I could

Have prolonged those moments

Nurtured the spark

To a full blown flame

But it was not to be

I could not

Or would not

And for that

We are both the poorer

 

DREAMING AGAIN

glittering crab

baited by happiness

rests on high mountains

where the views are clear

and a soul is calmer

                        (to be sad

                        yet feel so well

                        is curious

                        secretly I am amazed

                        at such optimism)

the honey in his veins

is bait

cast from the mountaintop

for a growling bear

                        (what does not destroy me

                        makes me stronger

                        poisons brew balsams

and wounds

contain powers that heal)

soft-treading lions are loose

conquering their freedom

to be masters

in their own domain

                        (spreading dreams again

                        so vulnerably

                        yet for now

                        it is enough

                        to believe you love me)

it is no sacrifice

better the follies of the mountaintop

than dreamless shadows

plundered

squandered

in desolate valleys

FINGERS TOUCH

fingers touch

hands hold

eyes meet

no words speak

for a starving man

the merest crumbs of time

fashion a feast

a banquet of joy

feverishly grasped in fear of returning famine

as if the taste were transient

a springtime bloom presaging no summer sun

did not Camus

in the midst of winter

find within him

a glorious summer

(before blowing out his brains)**

does not summer follow spring

uncluttered by fancy’s fears

does not the bell-flower cherry

after naked blooms die away

put out a leafy shade

to nurture new season’s growth

should not then

the hermit crab***

scavenging scraps of womanfood

subsisting on frugal fare

inside the bubble of love

his cold night warmed

by dragons breathing fire

fearing careless claws

will burst the magic moment

the fragile friendship

cling on tight

to life’s roulette

chance a final turn

on fortune’s wheel

bask in the honey glow

of conscious care

his ice-freed soul

sustained

by a Sagittarian sun

fingers touch

hands hold

eyes meet

no words speak

 

REGENERATION

the caress of your hands

the sweet warmth of your lips

the joy in your eyes

your eager wetness

these are life to me

earth fire air water

elemental passions

that nurture me

feed me

and bring me back to myself

I thank you for them

with a sunny poem

on a soulspring morning

 

SOMEDAYS

somedays I feel a pain so deep

a drowning despair, a watery sadness

beyond the reach

of alcohol’s morbid mask

of soporific soap operas

the deadening beat of rock

the social chatter of partying friends

work’s partial concentrations

and tennis balls struck in anger

a pain that only

the most elemental sensations

can block out

within the compass of sea and sand

my floating body washed by the waves

dried by the sun

within the compass of our mutual joy

the warm embrace

the sensual touch

the present passion

the orgasmic now

the quiet nakedness as

through your love

life surges back.

 

Why do I love you

Why do I love you

Let me tell you why

I love you because

You accept me as I am

The mad passions

The tranquil joys

The tearful sadness

Because you give me time

To discover myself again

And make me feel

Free to be me

I hope that I

In my turn

Make you feel

Free to be you

Always.

____________________________________

*     The reference is to the film Last Tango in Paris.
**   I don't know where I got that idea from; Camus died in 1960 in a car accident.
*** My star sign is Cancer and I was born in the Chinese Year of the Dragon.

50. Eros Unbound: Cross Cultural Sexual Personae

[Warning; this blog contains explicit sexual language and images.]

Andy rolls up his shirtsleeves above the elbow and fetches the soap from the vanity basin. Eeva bends forward for him to soap her back.

“I suppose we should count ourselves lucky really,” he says as he runs the soap across her neck and shoulders and down her back.

“How’s that, my love?”

“Lucky to have had all that in our lives. The love. The passion. I know sometimes it all seems too painful and you think to hell with it. But then think of all the people who never experience any of that. What they’ve missed. It’s like there’s two kinds of people in the world. Never mind rich and poor, or good and evil. What divides the sheep from the goats is sexual passion and love all wrapped up together. Knowing the intense pleasure of it. Or not knowing. I’d hate to be on the outside looking in on that with some kind of sick envy. Better performers than spectators, don’t you think, even if we crash and burn?“

"And no one can ever steal away the memories of it."

“You know, I’ve probably told you this…"

“Many times, I expect!”

“How surprised I was when I found women get horny too. I was brought up to view love and lust as incompatible, one of the angels, one of the devil. To believe sexual desire was an exclusively male thing. Dad’s sex talks were the weirdest of things. Like he had a whole different language for them, words I never heard him use in any other context. Sort of biblical. A quagmire of strange terms and hidden codes – impure thoughts, fornication, the sanctity of marriage, carnal lusts. Once I began to understand what he was on about, well, you can imagine. The prohibitions became a source of fascination. Then he told me one of the girls in the youth club was not the kind of girl I should be interested in. That sort of did it really. Suddenly her contours and flirtatiousness took on huge appeal and mystery.”

“So, what happened?”

“We did indulge in what, in those days, was called heavy petting but when I eventually plucked up courage and slid my hand inside her knickers I found something pulsing and wet. I was so shocked. Pulled away immediately. Dad’s sex talks never hinted at anything like that. Mum and Dad were kind of affectionate together in front of us kids but never overtly sexy. I couldn’t imagine them rushing off to bed in a fit of passion. Who was that American comic – Woody Allen? Lenny Bruce? – who said, when the facts of life were explained to him, that he could imagine his father doing that. But his mother? No way!”

Andy takes the facecloth and starts rinsing the soap from Eeva's back.

“All that Protestant guilt stuff,” Eeva says. “Thank God, I never had that to deal with. That coy, hidden in the corner bashfulness. In our family, sexuality was always very explicit. Tiki sculptures, marae carvings are full of open vulvas, and massive turgid pricks. Full Monty. And all us kids could see the passion between Mum and Dad as well as the love. So my sexuality has always been part of my sense of who I am. Then there was Pau’ura, one of my Tahitian aunties. She told me that in the old days I would have been one of the arioi…”

“The arioi?”

“The young and beautiful people – artists, warriors, lovers. Travelled from island to island entertaining, being entertained. Lots of feasts, sex, lavish gifts. Sounded good to me. I guess my sexuality has always been part of my sense of who I am. Probably makes me more open to sexual experiences than you. Never seemed particularly strange to me to want to see what it was like with a woman. Not that I wanted to join the Vagina Dentata.”

“The what?”

“Toothed vagina. Radical feminist organization. Celebrates female sex as predatory, swallowing up male power and virility; entrapping, consuming, castrating men.”

“Sounds very Freudian.”

“Yea, knew you’d appreciate that. All that cannibalistic stuff you like to tease me about. Pau’ura told me that in the old days, in our early contacts with European sailors, our local women went out in the canoes with the warriors and stood up shouting, gesticulating, pointing at their fannies. Poor saps thought it was their lucky day. Major bit of cross-cultural misunderstanding there, I’m afraid. The sailors briefly enjoyed the diversion, but it was a challenge to battle. The vagina was associated with Te Po, the forces of cosmic darkness. It was a place of terror. The women were saying “Come in here, lads, and we’ll send you to oblivion.” Bit like those spiders that consume the male after mating…”

“And praying mantis. Don’t the females bite off the males' heads after mating? That’s a whole new concept of giving head, isn’t it?”

“Yuk Andy, that's not very nice. Anyway my ancestors soon got over the aggro. Started trading sex for iron nails off the ships – curiously appropriate really. Nails ripped out of everything, the decks, the bulwarks, everything. Such a flourishing trade the officers got scared the ships would fall apart.”

Andy laughs.

“I guess my sexual history was a bit difficult for you to handle at times, wasn’t it? But partly why you were attracted to me in the first place, eh? Me and my hot Polynesian thighs.”

“Yes, well, we just had tiny penises to look at. Sculptures of Greek boys and young men, all with fashionably tiny cocks. Hard cold bloodless marble. And paintings of Venus rising from the sea, delicate and demure, showered by flowers, with a nymph on hand to throw a cloak over her naked flesh. Not so much as a vulva in sight. Certainly no hints of toothed vaginas to terrorise us, swallow our virility. Nothing so vulgar. All we had was Freud’s mind fucking on the one hand and a bunch of randy Greek gods on the other. Oh, the lost joys of a classical education! I suppose I was programmed to fall in love with someone like you. Not by destiny, or fate, or the disposition of the stars – I have little time for such nonsense - but by the unconscious accumulation of images from my youth. Images of Polynesia from Cook’s accounts of his South Pacific voyages, and from paintings, novels, films, travellers’ tales. Of exotic, colourful places, large boisterous extended families, and warm-blooded, passionate women. What brought me to Tahiti in the first place. A world away from the cold winters of Dunedin and the melancholy joyless Presbyterian diet on which my sister and I were nurtured."

“Are we strange, do you think Eeva? Does everyone experience our fusion of love and lust in the one package? ”

“Sex is such a private thing, it’s hard to know. Fusion, confusion. I blame Eros, that cherubic little bugger. So two faced. The winged little romantic shooting arrows of love around indiscriminately. And the lusty sexy little devil, driving us to passion, sickness, delirium, the desire to possess, be possessed. He’s a two-faced erotic little bugger.”

“Two sides of the one coin, I guess?”

Statue of Eros, Picadilly Circus*

________________________________
Sources:
Paglia, Camille, 1990. Sexual Personae, London and New Haven, Yale University Press.
Salmond, Anne, 2003. The Trial of the Cannibal Dog: Captain Cook in the South Seas, London, Penguin/Allen Lane.

Note:
*All the world revolves around Eros? The 1892-93 statue is of Eros' brother Anteros and was described by its sculptor Alfred Gilbert as portraying 'reflective and mature love, as opposed to Eros or Cupid, the frivolous tyrant.' After complaints that it was too sensual it was renamed The Angel of Christian Charity but the name never caught on.