Poetics: Getting my Teeth

street art

It was as if I had only just been able to see colors and shapes for the first time...It was confusing, each sound running into the next sound, like the mingling reverbations of bells, until I learned to separate the sounds, and then they overlapped, each soft but distinct--increasing but discrete peals of laughter...peals of bells

It is like this,

the way Louis describes it, a great awakening
of the senses, which is not what gripped me
at sixteen, the first time i read Anne Rice---it was more
the sexuality~power, puberty's perspective

the taking, quenching the demon within yourself

stick your head in a speaker box, turn the sound
up, if you really want to know---this life
among the cacophony, a clatter, a gong, a screech

stare into a strobe light, flash, flash, flash faster
until your retinas dull, this---life, unending
stimulation, a flip book, blink, fast forward
film reel---until you turn

until you learn to separate sounds,
  moments into the little things, unnoticed

lady in the cross walk on 5th avenue, lay
your tongue along the line from the soft spot
behind her ear to the collar bone, just to taste
her h-h-heartbeat, the black bruise that rests
in her chest, last night, her lover---

pull back, don't take too much, let her live,
breathe, no need to sate yourself on just one---

a man runs the fruit stand on the corner,
gives samples to children every morning
as they wait for the bus, his joy heady wine
almost masking the remorse at the loss of his own,
feel the thrum in his hemoglobin pop along
your taste buds, like too much curry

don't hurry, slurp like some beast, have dignity
for them, but also yourself---pace

the bus comes, a tiny round face in a side window, pink
backpack across her shoulders, silk black hair,
emerald eyes and in them---do you dare taste
what pools there---

a cab driver, a suit-tie too tight-angry, soiled
pup, words wet on the brick, trash caught in a breeze
rising, separate each, sample, loveHATEpainRElief
SEcretsSOCietYsaltGRITgriefSIGHbeauty
pull your pen out, and furious-
ly write poetry---

No better than vampires---taking intimacy,
to quench that which lives within us---can you be-
lieve, do you want to know what i see---
when i look at you?

I heard the night as if it were a chorus of women beckoning me to their breasts.

Oh, Louis, you have no idea.

Process Note: Italicized lines are spoken by the vampire Louis in Interview with a Vampire by Anne Rice. This series of books was a staple of my teen years.

Over at dVerse Poets today, Blue Flute, who I had the chance to meet in New York last month, is guest hosting Poetics with a prompt I did not see coming, but then again, with Barnabus Collins rising from the dead at the movies, perhaps I should have. See you at 3 PM.