Behind the Door:
1. replaced a typo “on and one”
2. Added indentations to link ideas together, whale and inscrutable.
3. Refused to reblog, mostly to avoid spamming people’s dash.
Melville’s got that peg-leg bent again,
Going on and on about the inscrutable,
And I’m certain it’s just as like he’s talking up Hawthorne.
California hills in the dark,
Treeless, moving like specters,
As the moon hangs low in far too early morning sky.
First time I saw the whale …
She was very much like Eleanor Roosevelt,
But somehow made that work for her,
In the heat of her mother’s run-down apartment,
She sat astride me,
Teaching me how to kiss.
Yosemite has these great daunting expanses,
Fields of mountains that extend to the horizon,
And rough hewn shapes with the sharp lines of artists.
Next time I saw the whale …
She was this outpouring of pure sex,
Dressed in little but a leather red corset,
I remember the rain bouncing off the van,
Her underneath me,
Teaching me how to need.
In Fayetteville there’s an inpatient clinic,
You can hear the ones inside from the waiting room,
At least when they scream.
Next time I saw the whale …
She had hair I love to call strawberry blonde,
But the truth is it’s more copper,
At least without the dye she throws in it now.
Memories of her seem drenched in sunlight,
Even fingering her outside her house.
In first grade I threw a table on a kid,
I bit the teacher,
And I got expelled.
Next time I saw the whale …
He was something abstract.
He had my blonde birth hair,
Her violet birth eyes,
And he was beautiful,
The most beautiful child I’ll ever seen.
In kindergarten I walked in one day in a bad mood,
I punched two girls for laughing at me,
And beat my own head against a wall for twenty minutes.
The last time I saw the whale …
It was in the weight she carried with her,
The nervous energy in his kiss,
The dead desire she fed to me,
The way she cried when I gave her pleasure,
The sunsets on bluffs in the middle of forests.
In seventh grade,
I was mad at a friend,
And gave a girl a concussion.
Melville’s got that peg-leg bent again,
Going on and on about the inscrutable,
And I’m certain it’s just as like he’s talking up Hawthorne.
I’m not going to drink from that goblet as it passes me,
This is one hunt I’m not game for,
I’ve seen this whale enough to know,
What happens next.
In third grade, I kissed him,
And he was beautiful,
And I never told him that.
Inscrutable.
