She was Perfumed with Cigarettes and Beer
These are both from the Bowling Alley period. I find when reading back through them there is an underpinning of angst, fear, loneliness and anger, but there is an underpinning of hope strewn throughout, weaved into a tangled skein of confusion. There were a few “desire” poems from that period and I submit one for your approval.
She was Perfumed with Cigarettes and Beer
She stomped her feet
in defiance.
A gesture only known to youth.
To encapsulate beauty
with he word “cute”
Would be presumptuous;
superfluous really.
A life of desire
only known through gestures
of copulation for redemption.
Speaking of love
in the throes of ecstasy.
The drug of choice.
A modicum of desire
is all that’s required.
Alcohol, the catalyst
of wanton cruelties,
ruling consciousness,
the pain of friendship
and the flurry of seduction.
The moniker “cheater”
so deferential as to
abandon hope.
A life separated from a
promise of dreams
a promise of touch
a promise of love.
So valued as to capitulate
the necessity of abandonment.
Where is home?
Where is love?
So abstract a concept,
only to be requited by the foolish.
Unrequited,
the only vestige for the depressed.
She downs the wine with
one singular swallow.
Devaluing the past
with a hope of the future.
A desperate cry of my name.
To bring resolution to pain.
To bring absolute restitution
to choices so wrongly executed.
But how to absolve?
How does one abandon
that driving force to mend others?
How does one ignore hope?
ignore love?
ignore life?
to adhere to pretensions held by priests?
Who am I to absolve
the pain of others when
I cant evolve through
the pain I derive?
Love contracts hope
but desire trumps all.
Matters of the heart are forgotten
for individual moments
of ecstasy.
So she stands and pounds her feet
with the beat of my heart
and I smile
hug
console
then abandon her to problems
as I embrace my own.
Sean McBride 