Escape From Love

Jim Larwill

Canadian Shield Chapbooks II.
Text Box: NEUTRAL GROUND When I was younger if I asked a girl out for a coffee, there was sort of a unwritten understanding that when we were at the Chinese Food Place we wouldn't suddenly be fucking upon cold tile floors, broken plates of chow-mein smeared by bodies amidst staccato of Canton curses. Back then I thought people were flowers, my heart – a root, not a speeding car on death ice streets hitting every pedestrian possible. When coffee was finished conversation would shift to making love instead of war, hands would meet, would lead soft feet through bearded fields. The touching, not a parking lot conquest of violent crush lust, kisses – not burning or desperate, when sex was tender neutral ground – not claiming to be love. Text Box: ARCHAEOLOGY OF IMPERMANENCE In the bathtub I compose a poem and in my memory our love making is a tender meeting - tranquil clouds in a warm sky of delicate breezes; our beings separate, floating in a shared space, a timeless non-existence - this because when we looked across the bed our naked bodies offered no desire: lust became a meaningless word, we hung motionless as the moon plummeted, stars faded, sun crept up the sky; until gentle morning birds tugged at our ears, our touches were seas that rolled up sand written words; we were innocent, unspoiled by violent needs, awaking in each other’s arms, at peace with each moment, free from future definitions. Text Box: I try to forget my heart is a paper-thin hymen. Each time it breaks it grows again. Each time it breaks it is written new with memory. Once-upon-a-time there was a flood. It was at the bottom of the stairs. The bedroom was never reached. This one I did not carry in my arms. This one I took right away. “I’ve only read about this sort of thing happening in books!” Her flood had drenched the hardwood floor: and for months varnish peeled and cracked, floor boards on stairway threshold continued to swell with passion. Each time I passed this discoloured patch I remembered a face washed with disbelief. I felt a warm spill on my naked lap, flush that curled around my thighs. Text Box: The coffee becomes sweeter near bottom of the cup. As I look into this new one’s eyes I know nothing of the past. It is all nameless. It is all unknown. In front of me there is a body covered in sticky tick-tack labels. Small squares of yellow paper. I want to peel them off one by one. I want to remove the words. Instead, I read them. I say the syllables over and over in my mind, but I have no idea what they mean, or, what they do not mean. Something is hidden. It frightens me. I look at the floor and sip my morning cup of coffee. Then she asks about my sexual preference and all I can think to say is that “I am a virgin.” We smile as I take another sip of coffee. Text Box: The bedroom poem now thusly composed I can pull this warm bath plug, proud I have been able to remember it exactly as it was and is and is . Water half drained I stand, turn as I rise, startled by a man with a demented face looking back at me from this same bathroom on the other side of a mirror: he winks and smiles at me, on his right shoulder five nicotine stains, same size as small digital coins, his left arm dappled with blue spots, Text Box: MORNING COFFEE I share morning coffee with a young woman. She speaks the language of sex. Articulates the potential of her body. A playground: lips, tits, and clits. Each structure wrapped in a label. She mouths the words. Lists each function. Parses the grammar of anatomically correct dolls. Syntax of Lego constructed genders. Linguistics of battery animation. In silence I take a sip of coffee. I try to remember - names - ex-lovers - words I wrote - with sweat - with semen - tears and blood each story a burning holocaust. The coffee is thin and laced with chocolate. Text Box: some of these finger-painted marks centre dark, his right shoulder imprinted with a circle; her rounded vowel mouth biting the word – orgasm, theta skin written as a symbol, across its middle jet black voiceless pout – line of bilabial corpuscle ink. And as pipe sucked water breaks into articulated laughter, I wonder who this man is, because it would appear his surface archaeology displays artefacts of action countering tranquil moments: my previously remembered feelings, becoming your poetry of splendid serenity – spinning down a punctuated drain.