Skip to main content

To Have Without Holding

Learning to love differently is hard,
love with the hands wide open, love
with the doors banging on their hinges,
the cupboard unlocked, the wind
roaring and whimpering in the rooms
rustling the sheets and snapping the blinds
that thwack like rubber bands
in an open palm.

It hurts to love wide open
stretching the muscles that feel
as if they are made of wet plaster,
then of blunt knives, then
of sharp knives.

It hurts to thwart the reflexes
of grab, of clutch; to love and let
go again and again. It pesters to remember
the lover who is not in the bed,
to hold back what is owed to the work
that gutters like a candle in a cave
without air, to love consciously,
conscientiously, concretely, constructively.

I can't do it, you say it's killing
me, but you thrive, you glow
on the street like a neon raspberry,
You float and sail, a helium balloon
bright bachelor's button blue and bobbing
on the cold and hot winds of our breath,
as we make and unmake in passionate
diastole and systole the rhythm
of our unbound bonding, to have
and not to hold, to love
with minimized malice, hunger
and anger moment by moment balanced.

-- Marge Piercy

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

MICE at Apsara Angkor Resort and Conference Center

Photo: Standard room; bath MICE stands for Meetings, Incentives, Conventions and Exhibitions. It’s an important industry because  MICE  visitors are usually on business and often spend more than leisure travelers. Meetings, incentives, conferences, and exhibitions, or Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, and Events (MICE) is a type of tourism in which large groups, usually planned well in advance, are brought together for a particular purpose. Meeting  – Is a general term indicating the coming together of a number of people in one place, to confer or carry out a particular activity.  Incentive  – Meeting event as part of a programme which is offered to its participants to reward a previous performance. Conference  – Participatory meeting designed for discussion, fact-finding, problem solving and consultation. As compared with a congress, a conference is normally smaller in scale and more select in character – features which tend to ...

Cause and Effect

It's because the earth continues to wobble on its axis that we continue to stumble down the streets of the heart. It's because of the loneliness of the first cell trying to swim through its primordial pool that we are filled with a kind of galactic fear. For example: one moment a rocket falls capriciously into a square. Another moment, a rogue wave turns over the fishing boat whose crew leaves their memories floating like an oil slick that never reaches shore. In this way we understand our dying loves scratching at the door. In this way, each love creates its own theory of pain. Each love gnaws the derelict hours to the bone. But because there are so many blank spaces in history we still have time to write our own story. Wittgenstein said our words have replaced our emotions. He never understood how we have to cleanse ourselves of these invisible parasites of doubt and fear. We might as well worry about the signals from dead worlds wandering around the universe forever. Think i...

Phrases for Public Speakers at Sea

by M. B. Powell We ought, first of all, to note her oceanic eyes flecked with sea wrack. And we should pause to consider the wavy wilderness of her damp hair. I will not dwell on her cheeks ruddy under my thumbstrokes. I will not attempt to explain the shapely abalone shells of her ears. I wish to call your attention to the cunning animal of her mouth, muscular. I wish to say something about the mollusky dark language of her kisses. I am obliged to mention her sudden breasts, breaching, rhythmic. And I am perfectly astounded at her finger charting my lips round her nipple. Here, in this connection, let us notice her nipple against the roof of my mouth. Here, in passing, let us observe ...