Berlin cafe - Casablanca saloon

 
this is not a love story.
when I begin, I don’t know how or where it will end, so it’s a
whimsical destination for me, as it is for you. why I write it,
why you read it: the reasons are recorded in a journal in hell.
we’ll be allowed to study it when we get there.

these cities of mystery & voluptuous panic, they are fiction.
what is a life, except a chapter, a passage, in an unwritten book.

my woman & I, we’ve stayed too long in one place. she writes the
sorrow of ghosts that prowl inside her. we don’t know the great
truth of love, how could we? there is a violent seraph within us;
we have no word for it, so we call it passion.

we drag the small tragedy out & compose it in it’s naked state of
grace, & that is our sin. love, the concept of it, has been persecuted
over & over, as if it were 1948, or 1984.

we stole a jeep, & drove upon roads that crossed, & crossed again.
on a side street, we deserted our green chariot, to walk to Metro,
where Ezra Pound had embroidered cantos.

the sinister beauty of night, the billowing moans of the train; & if
it was raining, our noir cliché was fulfilled.

as the iron beast journeyed, we watched the old world fade through
the window. when the flames of our lust ascended, we found a
hidden alcove & disrobed, to let our perspiring flesh weld. by our
kisses & entangling, we ate & drank the forbidden waters of
Babylon that rushed from us.

the title of my wayward lyric predicts a saloon, & thus we made our
way there, an oasis in the desert. we were given breads & fruits, good
whiskey & dark coffee, & we danced. I become too drunk to write, &
must abandon my strange poem. let Cummings speak it’s goodbye:

There is a journey
and who is for the long road
loves not to linger

For him the night calls
out of the dawn and sunset
who has made poems…


(Art: Sanne Sannes)