A love poem for the red rattler

A love poem for the red rattler

 

 

red rattler

We began as a clumsy collision

our bodies bumping and bruising with each dance of the carriage

a rattling rumba… ti ti ka ti, ti ti ka ti, 1 2 & 3, now where are we?

We try to make each other fit, etch ourselves upon the other

We spend time in each other’s daydreams, lulled by age and the lure of longings past

Slipping into sleep, your edges soften and I can climb in and explore your secrets,

crawl into your corners,

balance on your broken edges,

scramble across your scarred surfaces,

I find messages of forgotten codes and lost loves

a ticket, a talisman, a proof, a truth, a telling

I don’t let up

“Why are you leaving?” … “Where are you going?”

 

I’m shaking you awake and launching into you

until I’m impaled, expelled, laid bare, undone…

This time together is peeling me like wallpaper groaning off a wall

You skin me

and the hot red mess of my life spills out staining the floor

a murder on the dis-orient express

 

You remind me that my body is a vintage carriage and I’m a passenger in it, on this journey,

My life is running through me like a film

a stream of postcards and blurred impressions

merging into a melancholic rhythm

possibilities flashing past us and within us

like air rushing past bodies plummeting to earth

and we are dropped into each others’ arms

with a gasp, a jolt

(where am I?)

An almost death, a pleasurable preview of another place

beyond the confines of this carcass

outside the adolescent fumblings of flesh

But no, we’re not there yet

This is not truth but transience

We are derailed, marooned, in our fragile shells

drawing a promise in the misted window and opening a can of worms

Wanting

Distance

 

It’s always further than you thought…

And over before you know it.


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