cradle of the eternally forlorn

"Kiss me. Walk across this room and kiss me then. Do it now, right now. Walk across the room now and when you arrive do it right away. Do not stand there, gazing down at me. Don’t look into my eyes and don’t have your eyes roam searchingly all over my face. Get your mouth onto mine straight away. My eyes will close and your eyes will close and it will have begun. Kiss me. Walk across the room and when you arrive do not hesitate, do not savour the moment. Do not look into my face, into my eyes, for a further sign. Just do as I tell you. I am not going to move now, I am going to stay right here, with the fire right behind me, and you are going to come across the room, just like I’ve told you to, and I will watch you in fact, coming towards me, and of course you will not hesitate. Your mouth will lever onto mine and my neck will crumple because of the sudden force in your jaw and your lips are rigid and twisted and your tongue is an ancient cold thing, waking in fits and starts, alarmed and automatic. And for a few moments I won’t mind. My head crooked to one side, my mouth yanked wide, your tongue darting here and there, alert but senseless, the fire right behind me. The back of me incalescent and primordial. Kiss me and then it will be done. Walk across the room now and kiss me as hard as you like, as hard as you can. Pull me to you hard if you can so my heels lift away from the ground, I won’t recoil and squirm away. I’m going to put my arms right around you, that’s the whole point, my dear. My fingers will clasp your neck and climb up into your hair, scour out your ears even, and tread across your face, your whole face. My fingertips will come together neatly nailed over your incited eyes. Come on old man, walk across the room. I’m waiting for you. Kiss me. Get it over with. It’s not going to be pleasant and it’s about time we found that out. Come here and take hold of me with your old hands and your old mouth. Reach out of your obscene godforsaken darkness into my plush obscene depths and grope your way along – I’m not going anywhere. For a few moments I’ll stay perfectly still. You have sat on the wall above the lakes looking at me and we have walked up the bridleway and down the bridleway and we have stood side by side at the gate and looked across the fields and when it rained we got in close to the trees there and you come by here every afternoon as if I had nothing else in the world to do and you see nothing wrong with that. And now you must kiss me so that your error is unveiled and you encounter how far you are exactly from being able to sweep me right off my feet and I must remain absolutely still in order to feel you grasp and falter, rasp and dodder – because, after all, it’s not as if you are not a captivating man, you are a very captivating man indeed, and I must forthwith feel the failure of your kiss upon my lips, stuttering unmistakably throughout me, and you must and will feel it too. It will be a most terrible kiss, sluggish and lathery, aphotic and unsteady, forgettable – it will die within moments. A cold submerged thing, briefly spurtive, barely supported. Poor flesh, sad bone. And then it will all be over. Walk across the room now old man and kiss me – let’s put an end to this. And so he came and reached right in and damn well broke my banks." -Claire-Louise Bennett, from Big Kiss, Bye-Bye

"I’m going to fall I said no you’re not he said, I’m going to fall I said, no you’re not he said again, said again with his voice, the breath of it in my ear, lacing and unlacing my throat, his breath, yes, careening upon my collarbones, spreading out and disclosing my breasts, it was his breath, yes his, spiralling over my belly, arriving level with my arousal, paused at my arousal like a hunkered beast at the entrance to an unknown lair, seemed to examine it, his breath examined my arousal, saw the whole thing, the thick hunger and the shrouded depths of that hunger and the variegated history of that hunger and the chthonic force of that hunger and the recklessness and the willingness and the shamelessness, all mine, all undoing me, all bringing me to my knees. I’m going to fall I said no you’re not he said, I’m going to fall I said again no you’re not he said again, hold onto me he said, hold onto me he said again and he lifted my lifted leg higher still so that I fell, fell back against the column, and I could feel him then, the end of him there, there on the edge of me, and still I couldn’t reach for him. Can’t reach for him yet. I was afraid to take hold of him, I was afraid, terrified, of everything beyond his erection and my arousal. I was afraid of his shoulders, and I was afraid of his eyes, and I was afraid of his fingernails even, because what if I get lost in them, see the wheat fields and the slack bicycle chain and the oil getting everywhere and his poor forehead, what if I love them now and further back, see the whole thing in them, up ahead too, how it all could be, what if I can’t ever get them out of my mind, what if worse my mind can’t hold onto them. And these thoughts were a torment and I was tormented, tormented, up against that column with one leg lifted, up and out, him on the edge of me, my head pushing back into the column, up and down against the old carved stone. Something rub off on me. God give me strength. I opened my eyes. I opened my eyes and saw his face, and his eyes were closed and his face was still and engrossing and in front of me and I put my hands on it. Fingers covering his eyes, fingertips lightly pressing his forehead just above the brow. Yes it was my hands covering his face, his whole face, my hands and his face, and it was his mouth then, just his mouth I could see, all else covered. His mouth. His mouth. All else gone. Stone. Dark stone. Shadow. Deathly cold air. His mouth. The only mouth. I brought my thumb to it. Took the thumb away brought it back. Pressed his lips, pushed them around and around, until they were moist, until they were swollen. The end of my thumb, pressing, pushing, there on the edge. The very same thing. He got in under me, hoisted me further up the column, the old carved stone. Drew my lifted leg in close then. Wrapped my leg about his body, dug my heel into the small of his back. Go in, I said, and go in deep. Go in and get as much of me as you can." -Claire-Louise Bennett, from Big Kiss, Bye-Bye

"Of all stupid art the poem is the most stupid, a nearly imperceptible flick of the mop just beneath the surface of the water, an idle flutter of the hand. Very stupid; outside all good sense and discretion, because the poem must be indiscreet or not at all. It should just trail aimlessly in the hospitable water. Floating on the sea or swimming. It must be the sea, no other water. Waves, but not stormy waves, the slight rocking movement. This floating is like a hotel. Nothing interrupts sensation; the body is supported and welcomed by a gentle neutrality. Especially the sea on an overcast morning of light rain, the encompassing pleasure enveloping the skin, salt water and soft water, I will take a bath, I will write all morning in a hotel, I will lack nothing, the soft coarse sheets wind around me, I float in the possibility of drifting unattended, the freedom of floating, no weight, no companion, just the hospitality of the encompassing element. A slight coolness is enough to bring the attention to the sensation of water on skin, of worn cotton on skin. Or perhaps in a café in the village in summer, the bells ringing, the irregular waves of conversation, occasional scraping of chairs on stone pavement, but mostly floating, in the sea or in a hotel. The superior hospitality of the threadbare hotel, the minimal frisson of slight discomfort, as in cool water, which augments the feeling of the skin, the feeling of being only skin, punctuates the sensation of being in the minimum calmly, as in an element. The elemental hospitality of the inferior hotel, felt in the minimal, even ironical welcome, the absence of any exaggeration or luxury that would leave one in its debt, the muteness and reluctance of the clerk: this is the stupidity I crave." -Lisa Robertson, from The Baudelaire Fractal