Sometimes

Sometimes you want to let go,
But you don’t.

Sometimes you want to break free.
But you don’t.

Sometimes the letting go
Has a higher price than you care to pay.

When the longing can make so sweet the misery,
Out of love we enslave ourselves to hopelessness,
And sit in our darkened rooms at night
Loving and longing without hope,
Savoring the sweetness of our misery.

Sometimes you want to let go,
But you just don’t.

The Highway Of My Dreamtime

I rise from my rest and walk to my car,
Where I take my seat with such ease;
And move upon the darkened highway,
The highway of my dreamtime.

I feel the wind on my face;
The high beams, there in the distance.
Above, so far, the stars glide idly,
Still in the vast, silent darkness.

They cannot know. Or perhaps they can
Hear my heart pounding at the memory
Of her that I love, who dwells beyond,
Out there, somewhere in the distance.

And who now drives me to be here,
Here behind the wheel, rushing in the dark,
To her whose name I cannot say, but who
Dwells at the end of this dark highway.

The highway of my dreamtime.

Dark Women

Dark women enchant me. Women such as have a gaze which is fixed and strong, and which communicates an understanding of things beyond the ordinary. Things I do not know. From whom I must softly petition to know their secrets.

You’ll note I didn’t say I love dark women. I’ve been truly in love one time in my life, and the woman I loved wasn’t dark in any sense of the term. And I’ve come to know, perhaps belatedly, that one can never really know with whom they’ll fall in love. It’s a thing that happens for reasons we don’t really understand. Like the Tao. If we think we understand it, it probably isn’t love.

Yet, there is love, and then there is that other thing. That fierce madness which consumes one, that unreasoning obsession, that fire in the mind that keeps one awake at night and dominates all thought during the day.

I know two such women. One knows how I feel, but it’s hopeless. The other doesn’t know, and it’s even more so. But I think of them always. And it is them I have in mind whenever I write of how a man feels about a woman. I think of her dark, languid eyes; the gentle line of her lips; the brilliant flash of a smile directed at me; the smoky melody of her words; the color of her skin, as pale as Carrara marble. I simply want to place my mouth upon her arm to feel its cool translucence upon my lips.

And, of course, her dark, dark hair hanging to her shoulders. It evokes reveries that are not merely erotic. I don’t know why, but it bespeaks of things of which I am but vaguely aware. A knowledge that goes beyond my understanding. And I must know of these things.

Each woman would regard me as an absolute fool. I’m certain neither has patience with a dreamer. Which is basically what I am. A writer. A dreamer. A poor lover in love with improbable visions which cannot be in this world.

And yet, . . . somewhere. .