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