Love Spasm The Third

On 2022050720220507 By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems24 Comments

When my ex left, our youngest was
But three years old – alas –
So I would take him daily to
A little pre-k class

The girl who worked there was so young
But seemed to like the way
I’d sit with him – and other kids –
Beginning every day

So, finally, I asked her out
And she said that she would
So I drove out to get her
When she said it would be good

And she came out to meet me
Well before I’d left my car;
And it struck me, so I asked her
Before I had gone too far

Exactly just how old she was
“Um, twenty” – her head hung —
She looked up, her eyes pleading
Asking if that was too young

“Oh, no, no – you’re age suits you”
That was all I thought to say
But I knew I wouldn’t go on
Any further in this way

So post-dinner, I told her
Gently, how much fun I had
And then I took her back home
To her mother and her dad

And said, “I will not lie to you:
I will not call again,
But if I may, I’d like to say
To you now, as a friend:

You’re beautiful and charming,
And if ages weren’t in play,
I’d probably want to call you
From the end of the driveway.”

But she was not placated
As we both felt something strike:
The pain of liking someone
Who it is
Just wrong

To like

A Surprising Postscript to Love Spasm the Third

On 2021051220210511 By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems11 Comments

[This happened in April of 2015.]

In quite a twist, I saw her at the park.
Full sixteen years since we’d our fateful date;
She now the age that I was then, and with
Two children now, of roughly four and eight

She called to me as I was walking by
I didn’t recognize her at first sight;
But when she smiled, I knew right away
So I walked towards her in the dusky light

We sat down on a bench as her kids played
She told me of her marriage and her work
I told her all these years I hadn’t known
If she looked back on me as just some jerk

She said she’d opened up her heart to me
And at the time, she didn’t understand
But as she grew she realized that I
Had tried to be to her a gentleman

I told her of my family and my son
Who she could not believe is twenty now
I looked at those two images of hers
We’d stayed as long as my time would allow

And as I turned to walk away I said
That I was truly happy her to see
She hugged me for an instant, then I left
Still, I think, as shocked as I could be

I got back to my car at almost-night
So glad that I’d, just once
Done something
Right

Unrequited Love Spasm

On 2019123120191230 By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems7 Comments

When I was so very young
I loved an older girl;
To me, she was perfection, and
The crown of the whole world

I helped her with her homework
For many days on end:
But as much as I loved her, she
Saw me as just a friend

A friend whose name she seemed to have
Some trouble in recalling;
Although she saw me every day
And knew that I was falling

In love with her – she did know this –
But that happened a lot:
So just one other dude who liked her
Didn’t get her hot

I’ve looked back on it since, and thought:
I know that I was callow.
But what is more amazing’s that
I didn’t know how shallow

She was; or how bad I was
In my youthful incoherence:
To love someone who really was
Not much more than appearance

Then recently, I saw her:
Thirty years had past since then:
And she was bright and charming and
All that she should have been

So I had to revise my
Patronizing memory:
If I had seen the real her then
Maybe
She’d have seen
Me

(“Unrequited Love Spasm” – 1-27-2015)

Love Spasm The Seventh

On 2019123020191230 By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems5 Comments

Alright, then. She was forty-six
And I was twenty-three;
And I would fantasize about her
With some frequency

She worked just down the hall, divorced,
With boys about my age;
And we were friends, we laughed, we talked
And one day reached the stage

Where she thought she would fix me up.
So I would choose from three
Young friends of hers; we’d all go out
And see what we would see.

After that evening, at her place
She asked me who among –
But the next words I never heard
Instead I felt her tongue

Inside my mouth, her lips on mine
And it was everything
I had imagined it would be.
And so began our fling.

We weren’t “together” all that long
She broke it off one day;
Saying it was not fair to me
And had to be this way

But that’s another story.
Life seems strange, then, in review:
For fantasies aren’t always idle
Sometimes
They come true
.
.
.

(this prompt)

November’s Chalice

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I was, I think, a hurried man.
To get to where and what my goal;
A confidence, a worked-out plan,
An inside-out, and fevered soul,

When she November’s chalice brought
For me to sip the honeyed wine
I’d wanted, and through seasons sought,
But that was hers, and never mine.

She was, I see now, flourishing
Upon the edge of certainty;
An interlude for nourishing
A strength that lay in dormancy,

And I, I was a puzzle piece
She had to lay upon a board
To find her own way out; release
The limits she had kept, and stored,

For she, when she was just a girl,
Had built a picture in her mind
Of what was not to be her world,
A summer costume-tale confined —

But I saw autumn: elegance,
And she responded to my eyes:
It wasn’t me she ever saw,
But her own, pure reflection

Within the chalice gleaming red,
Of falling hard and straight surprise
I’d taken in before I knew
What lay in that direction —

It was, I know, not all that long
Before I felt December’s blue
Come crashing down in loneliness;
But what was left, and what is true

Is that what we take in is ours.
For some things lie beyond regret:
Like autumn days, and once-drunk wine,
That aging hearts remember

Yet

A Resonance

On 2019042920190429 By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems1 Comment

I heard across the span of years the sea.
A younger smaller form of you-and-me:
Our latent powers weakened by the storm,
Each pressured in our ways to fold, conform —

But on that shore, we held to skin on skin,
Our bronze desire: to escape again
Into a world we hoped we could make last,
And be unchained from still more distant past.

But on the brink, a sudden hesitance;
The sea-sound of our hearts, a resonance
That echoed over shores where blue turned gray,
And blew our fragile happening

Away

Roni’s Engagement

On 2019042920190429 By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems2 Comments

She called to tell me that she was engaged –
Me, dating some love spasm at the time –
Who I brought with me to meet them for drinks
Which I think were Coronas – yes – with lime

And she still looked a perfect movie star
And so did he, if truth, in fact, be told;
They were so good together: he was kind.
And I was happy for the ring of gold

She wore now on her finger as a sign
That she with him would now forever stay.
A thing I thought unlikely at the time,
Although they’re still together to this day

It’s funny: I write poems all the time.
I dredge these stories up from memory:
And find sometimes I didn’t know my heart
Until I write these down in poetry

We’d flirted with each other, and had tested
The waters of erotic friendliness;
When that part of our friendship was abandoned
I found, I didn’t love her any less

I loved her more as friends; for she was regal,
And meant for kindness as a life reward:
And she was happy now – I know she still is –
With someone who loved her
Who she
Adored