2.7
June 7, 2017

Alone, I keep the Wolves at Bay. {Poem}

Poetry is necessary nectar.

It sustains and feeds our souls, the side of us that yearns for raw beauty, clarifying experiences, magnetic people, and fortifying love. Recently, I read (again) one of Henry Miller’s famous love letters to Anais Nin, Don’t Expect Me to Be Sane Anymore, and it left me (again) curled on the floor, in a puddle, my emotions and poetic inspiration running amok.

Both married at the time Anais and Henry engaged in an illicit affair, a “literary love triangle,” that included his bisexual wife, June. This poem was inspired by rising feelings of love forbidden, and longing left unfinished due to extenuating circumstances.

~

Here,

I find myself locked and loaded,

in my bed, leaning, 

with charged-up, sweet emotions,

wondering, dreaming,

about where they—these feelings—can possibly go.

Will they travel a few more boring, lonely byways to find you?

To get to you?

Will they trip and scale your rocky, musical mountain?

Can they wade through our duly cryptic prose?

Will they brush aside my ever-familiar?

And free-fall, out into nothing?

Will they help me leave this world for a while?

Or will they spider, and twist, only to bend back and retreat?

Will they hold me hostage?

And, do tell, for how long?

Will they continue to haunt me with

what if, what if?

And if so,

what then, what then?

How will it end?

Alone, I keep the wolves at bay, 

they flip and toss me, they don’t care if I sleep.

They start and they stop, a thousand times over. 

And I continue to gently weep.

They render me speechless, yet also bursting with words,

more words than I can hold, spilling,

tumbling down. 

Can I be happy without you around?

Will they work their dewy magic, their saturating truth?

Is that the way that this works?

Is that the way…that it goes?

Oh, locked and loaded is all wrong.

“Locked” is not how I feel.

“Loaded” isn’t quite right.

And though it’s not quite clear,

“wrong” is not “something happening” here.

~

Author: Kimberly Valzania
Image: Wikipedia
Editor: Lieselle Davidson

Read 9 Comments and Reply
X

Read 9 comments and reply

Top Contributors Latest

Kimberly Valzania  |  Contribution: 142,030