SYMPATHETIC LOVERS

I was perusing like a drunken fool
The sweet fat thighs of youth
When all her voices shrill and cool
And much more than disturbing cried,

“C’mon, cowboy, climb on and ride!”
Well it was something like that—I mean,
Something weird yet just the raunchy
Come-on that I longed to hear,

Thinking that surely in such fierce embrace
We might these pierced and harried hearts forget,
That in these coy considered copulations
We might discordant souls forget,

And so on and so on until, in no time again,
I was flaccid, torpid, silent,
Withdrawn without a trace,
Yet cocky there atop her face to face.

She coughed, then pushed me off and sighed.
“We are lying in these dank tangled sheets,” she intoned,
“Like any two wretched things cast up by the sea,
We are gasping the air and gasping the sea,

And if our dry tears be the measure of drowning,
If our lax limbs be the limits of flying,
Then we are in fact no more than voluptuaries
Caught at the end of our act—

Only that
And nothing more
And God must know
We hope for more…”


rcs.
3rd draft: 03/14/06
©1985 Ronald C. Southern

---