From: "T.L. Kelly" <room101@teleport.com>
Newsgroups: talk.bizarre
Subject: Passion
Date: Mon, 1 Dec 1997 20:41:15 -0800
Organization: Teleport - Portland's Public Access (503) 220-1016
Lines: 108
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.3.96.971201204009.2311G-100000@user2.teleport.com>

Passion: a tantric poem

Intense passion will not sustain us.
Love is the least of our problems.
It will only kill us.
In the meantime we have to keep warm, eat.
Passion is a gift marked open with caution.
On Christmas day I gave myself a good cry.
You cry on my breast and carry my heavy box.
You are cheating on your wife.
Your wife is an idea you have for a poem.
Your wife is the mother of your children, all poems.
You will pay for this, she says.
I am cheating on all my husbands.
My husbands only want me for one thing.
One piece of the puzzle.
The feds and I are being stalked by a lovesick rapist.
You are being stalked by the State of California.
Lottery bets are only good until Sunday in Washington.
Daily passion is the wet smoke rising from a fresh fuck.
I am feeding newspapers into the woodstove.
Intense passion is a test the gods hand out at mid-term.
It is graded on a curve.
I left school with my middle finger raised.
You taught convicts how to say it with feeling.
When the going gets tough, I look for a reason.
When the going gets tough, you look for a pay phone.
You are cheating on your children.
They are all females who love you unconditionally.
I am cheating on my daughter.
She wants to know everything I know today.
Children have the market cornered on true passion.
I am proof that long distance romance works only sometimes.
It is always my time of the month.
You worship women sitting near you in the cafe.
Distance is a relative term.
You worry about my debt to other men.
These same men worry about their debt to me.
Experimental passion never adds up on the calculator.
Passionate women are gathering nuts for the long cold winter.
Passionate men are spotted owls in the clearcut.
Passion will not grow unless we grow apart.
Passion ignites when the air rushes in.
I am feeding contributor copies into the woodstove.
You stood in the storm at the edge of the cemetery.
I am the only lucky fool to drive in this rain.
There's a poem for every cemetery in your travels.
I store notes for essays like handmaidens for the king's tomb.
I wake up from deep sleep and reach for your poetry.
You have already been awake for two hours.
The first time I knew passion, it stung me on the lip.
The first time you touched me the bees came back.
You shook me, enraged.
I suggested we go to Safeway.
Passion is what happens when you don't draw lines.
Passion is what breaks your mother's back.
I am driving 75 mph on the freeway with my watch ticking.
I arrive at Burger King where your homeless child was born.
I am late.
You stand at your typewriter clenching your fist.
You write eight pages to a corpse.
I make a phone call and ask who sent the babies breath.
My birthday is marked on a calendar in another country.
Funny how lovers and rapists think of the same gift.
You want to know where you stand in relation to a corpse.
Passion is suddenly a dead black goat in the laundry room.
I left school with my middle finger raised.
You taught convicts to say it with feeling.
True romance is the spotted owl pair no one has spotted.
We build nests.
That place is Indian summer on the bluff with a blanket.
That place is before Roethke died in the swimming pool.
That place is face down on the hood of a Cadillac.
Passion is a test gods give in the coldest wettest place.
You have already checked the doorknobs for grease.
You have noted she didn't remove her panties.
In the morning your wife will pack you a lunch.
In the morning I will ask my husband to bury the goat.
Intense passion will not sustain us.
The operator says I can't call you direct anymore.
I drive 80 mph just in case it's my fault.
Home is where I end up turning off the ignition.
Home is a gas station when I notice the car is on empty.
Home is a pile of wood and newspaper to start a fire.
Home is a parking lot and your face through the glass.
Passion is what happens when you're not paying attention.
You are cheating on your poems.
When you spread my legs and plunge in I worry.
I touch the charred edges of my stretch marks.
I open my eyes only when the silence is safe.
Passion is impossible to implant.
The rules tacked on your wall, my education.
I stalked the school where I lost my middle finger.
You taught convicts how to piss on the barbed wire.
You prepare chicken and rice and peas without salt.
We have an age problem.
I eat everything you put on the bed, I beg for it.
I never leave the bed unless I have to.
There are decades between us. You fell in first.
I whisper against your chest I am unworthy.
I walk down fraternity row.
My hands buried deep in your pockets.

wenchpoet

copyright 1995 T.L. Kelly. All rights reserved.