Suite of Eros and Sorrow

Rob Woodard

There's just something amazing
about a woman,
   naked from the waist down
   at least,
legs open and in the air …

underneath my triumph
or setting
the perfect trap

Or just acknowledging that the stars
are exactly where they
should be?

*

If I had to choose between Picasso's
late-life intensities
and Degas' filmy bathers
I suppose I'd choose the latter,

which makes me a bit of
a coward, I guess

But either way,
skirts will blow up into my face
and I will go crazy

*

Porn: pathos unintended—

For the lack of a warm
honest touch
   at some
   important point
breached reservoirs
of anger
now must find
their way home
to the
sea

*

I met her in a dream of my
own life—
of plump thigh and belly

abstraction
   real only
   in my
   unreality

Her life to service my fears
not surprisingly wasn't something
that
   interested her

And she didn't love me
of course

Not that we got far enough
for that to matter anyway

*

I want to tear your legs open
like a pomegranate
and slip my fingers into you
like firm velvet lies,

while my tongue
of no simile
knows exactly where
to wander
and exactly where
to slide

*

Love is a curve of hip
and thigh
in my heart of Rubens
and
   lust

as well as the crushing sorrow
of the knowledge
that a few less lonely nights
and a few more caresses
of caring
would change all this—

but I'm locked into the cycle
that has made me this way:
   frightened
   and frightening
crabbed
and
lost,
unloved
because
I can't
love,

which haunts me
as I cry over
the memory
of you:

the one I truly
tried to love,
the one
I screamed
and
died
thru,
the one
I both
terrified
and
bored
with
my
stupid
needs
and
angry
half-
formed
self

*

How did it end up this way,
with no her ever
and little me left
kicking
as well?

But it can't be all bad:
there's still enough of me left
to ask the question,
   to push this writing—

to ask for yet another chance to fix
that which I could never get right,

one more chance to hold
something that holds me back,
squirming with joy instead of doubt,
and for the first
time feel love
moving
in
both
directions

*

Oh Magdalena—I dreamed you as
strong and adventurous
but you turned out
just to be stubborn
and mean

Not that I was any better
in my desperate
manipulations
which formed
the baseline
of what I
called
love

Yet after all the long abscessed years
of my partial healing,
I must admit
that I still think of you often—
perfect in stray curl
and giggle
and teeth a little too
big for your mouth—

and for a few seconds here
and there my emptiness
is filled
and all the pain
and stupidity
of our short time
together
melts away
like
a
bad
dream
at
morning


© Rob Woodard 2007

---

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rob Woodard was born in Anaheim, California and lives in nearby Long Beach. He is the author of the novels Heaping Stones -- named one of the best fiction books of 2006 by Ottawa Xpress -- and What Love Is, to be published in 2007. Burning Shore Press will be bringing out his first volume of poetry, King Of Long Beach, in 2008. He is currently at work on a third novel, tentatively titled Backwaters of Beauty.