Sunday, October 1, 2017

Kit Kelen #638 - first love


638
first love

for one who won’t read this

I dreamt with you
asked after the children
I’ve never met
last night that was

it’s thirty years by my best guess
so much of your life you won’t remember
I love that ghosts still live
it’s here we have a heart

you had a good grip once
and so much want
the right kind
and I gave too
and loved

when dawn brought home
from nights of it
I would drive your mother’s car

how high hearts then!
how rough with ourselves we were to begin
I cruel and off on foetal too, teary

how young in that deciding
and then deciding not

we were flabby thinkers
so certain what we little knew
but true to it always
just a few tricks

how can I know the hurt of then
when I was the cause?

so slight of bluster
still things broke

kid’s scissors
coloured paper
Perkins paste
all still in the box

you made me an umbrella
I was flat as paper too

we were the children of comfortable flight
as these things go

all innocence those puppy licks
and tumbles into out of skin
pressed on through years to seasons

all aches were of the heart
(though once on a bike you were doored
and thought better of bikes then
but that was before me)

and in a flash – time after me!
telling the truth was practising pain
weren’t you always just where I dreamt you?
no, whatever it was, you were not that

now all among the never-know
must throw this dark voice out
please call me a name I’ll remember

time was running out of us
perhaps I should return the letters?

it’s not your death must learn of me
the rings I still have fit I think

why won’t you get your kids’ ages right?
because of course you are my creature
even if I never meant
you’re my making up

you then!
none blinder than waking
and drunk to stumble sometimes nights
and bags of dope were cheap
what lungs we had
and mum could hear a joint being rolled a suburb away

you had to teach my parents what a girlfriend was

in fact the job description’s just being written now
so many things for a first time!

I liked how you said ‘daddy’
and mummy got a snarl
that was for Ken
she brought him home
(like it says in the Ry Cooder song)
but she really loved him
she was sweet to me
stern too
in the three daughter way
her now-I-get-to-live

we’ve each seen what we won’t in selves
is that love’s all to tell?
shhh! secret!

in this room
we’re always young
and guessing who we are
can be

I was the wild you wanted then
each was to tame the other

and who’s this you
(I mean now)
whom should I address
a life too late

please call me a name
I’ll remember, I will

it will be different next time round

so many lives the one dream!

it must all be from a letter I wrote
never delivered
from pictures out of the box
long dark
and now I look
or yesterday it was
the literal one

I dream you now waking
and wonder you’re equally
corporeal with me
in all your elsewhere
how-can-be?

dad’s gone a long time
(thought you should know)
I know yr mum took herself out
I think I know why
mine’s not in a good way
still here but gone if you get me

I remember you grandfather going
the one who never washed his jeans
kindest man in the world
it was the saddest thing you’d ever known
you were the saddest thing I’d seen

still see
and just as we are always

we have no drift apart
no, we are even as the day

I wish you well
be happy

let’s drive out to the mountains
camp
life’s still there to make
and I’ll tell you if there’s a snake

here, curl into my shoulder
coo
it’s only me after all

a page across the blanks of mind
wasn’t it always my dream you were in?
how was it for you?

this is what I say to me
pointless as godward words-first
why not deify love?

call me the secret name
remember!

the past belonging in me
like a truth of the way
of how I’m here
and whom I’m words with deep
those dead to me still with
no need of resurrection






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