stonepicnicking_okapi

So the electricians are coming tomorrow to move the fuse box so I'll be out of electricity during the day, so I wanted to go ahead and post this.

Question: Love letters or poems or songs. Have you been on the giving end or receiving end of them? Any stories or comments to share?

My Answer:

I have thrown out almost all of my childhood stuff, except a few photo albums, but I do still have a love letter that 15 year old okapi received. I probably haven't read it since was 15, but I haven't chucked it either. One day I'll be interested/brave enough to look at it. But I know It's There.

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National Poetry Month:

I chose this theme for today because at the library I picked the same poem on two separate visits from the 'poem in your pocket' bin of tiny slips of paper rolled into scrolls. And it was "A Small Sad Ecstasy of Love" by Anne Carson, so I felt the Universe was trying to tell me Something.

But I've been watching some Youtube videos about childhood trauma and relationships (the Crappy Childhood Fairy) and I learned the word 'limerence' which is a state of infatuation and I don't consider myself to suffer from childhood trauma BUT a lot of what was said about limerence resonated (so maybe I did/am?). And the horrible thing is that I still do it but now I invent relationships instead of projecting them falsely on to real people.

So I have a little soap opera I imagine, daydreaming, at night, anytime, really, I'm never far away from it, while doing laundry and paying bills and doing life. And I have 6 friends in it, all ladies my current generation or slightly older, and they all have different personalities and careers and families and such there's drama and romance and success and road trips and hobbies and competitions/races and all kinds of things (maybe like that Whitney Houston movie where Angela Basset set fire to her husband's car? Or maybe more like The Golden Girls? But we don't live together unless there's a crisis). And I realize that it's sort of my old lady answer to what I used to do in terms of being infatuated with unavailable people. I'm infatuated with my own fictional characters. Who are, of course, unavailable. Because they aren't real.

Anyway, I wrote a love poem (a pantoum) about it because I think that's what Anne Carson is writing about, too.

A Small Sad Ecstasy of Love by Anne Carson

I like being with you all night with closed eyes.
What luck—here you are
coming
along the stars!
I did a road trip
all over my mind and heart
and
there you were
kneeling by the roadside
with your little toolkit
fixing something.

Give me a world, you have taken the world I was.

with you, closed eyes by okapi

a pair of fortune oysters. wisdom-pearls
inside. repeating echo. word for word.
a small sad ecstasy of love uncurls
twice. making sure it’s heard. a truth absurd.

inside repeating echo, word for word,
love letter, love letter, a new thought thought
twice, making sure it’s heard a truth. absurd
slight scraps of Sapphic verse: it’s not, it’s not

love letter. love letter. a new thought thought:
an ode to limerent love which keeps me
slight. scraps of Sapphic verse, it’s not. it’s not
real, true, this, you-and-you-and-you, leaps free

an ode to limerent love which keeps me
drugged. all night with closed eyes, screens dark, it plays
real, true. this, you and you, and you, leaps free
in raw technicolor, all, ways. always

drugged all night. with closed eyes. screens dark. it plays
on. art, this drama, chance meet, slow burn, flames
in raw technicolor, all ways, always,
swift path to small fames, a stacked pair of names

on art, this drama, chance meet, slow burn flames
to magic, romantic and tragic, too,
swift path to small fames, a stacked pair of names
under title, a studio, a crew

to magic, romantic and tragic, too,
a toast to many plots, sculpting a life
under title, a studio, a crew,
this love, this world carved and cleaved with mind’s knife

a toast to many plots, sculpting a life
that’s not even real, not here, nowhere near
this love, this world, carved and cleaved. with mind’s knife,
with a double blade, turned inward with fear

that’s not even real, not here, nowhere near
you, love, fixing something on the roadside,
with a double blade, turned inward with fear
while everything’s begging me to hide

you, love, fixing something on the roadside.
a small sad ecstasy of love unfurls.
while everything’s begging me to hide
a pair of fortune-oysters, wisdom pearls.