Conversations with Sorrow
May. 21st, 2010 11:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
summer_jackeli.
Plush leopard sits on the table. Its expression gentle
its pink nose plastic; it is very soft.
At first glance, you might think that it was new.
ii.
These artifacts, why do we keep them?
Their value seems transitory.
We were all new. Fresh from the machines, innocent of touch
you were not a leopard yet. But then love---
you were cherished, and spent each night
tucked beneath her breast, all surrounded by her scent and warmth and heartbeat
for a time.
Years later find you wedged in the back of a closet,
worn, filthy and defiled.
You had to be torn open and the stuffing all pulled out,
The weights taken from your paws forever.
Emptied, washed and smudged with sage;
made soft again
when sore hands brushed for hours, very gently.
You lost your name.
iii.
You will become a leopard, after all.
For love is leopardish;
It waits
It falls when unexpected, and takes its victim from behind.
Sharp and long of tooth, it enters the brain-case gracefully
And with precision
We die a little, every time
And live that we might sustain so beautiful a thing,
Supple, golden
So rare.
***
OK, I swear, I will eventually post something other than bad poetry to this journal again. There will even be dog pictures from this weekend, and I haven't updated on the parrots in too long. (Gavin is making soft little drawn-out conure cries in his sleep, and I'm up late again).
It's been a very long, hard week, which I'll probably be writing about later. One thing that happened was that I inherited a bag of plush, and one of them apparently had a poem in him. I'm getting a lot of mileage out of "love is like a leopard eating your brains," perhaps more than I ought.
Plush leopard sits on the table. Its expression gentle
its pink nose plastic; it is very soft.
At first glance, you might think that it was new.
ii.
These artifacts, why do we keep them?
Their value seems transitory.
We were all new. Fresh from the machines, innocent of touch
you were not a leopard yet. But then love---
you were cherished, and spent each night
tucked beneath her breast, all surrounded by her scent and warmth and heartbeat
for a time.
Years later find you wedged in the back of a closet,
worn, filthy and defiled.
You had to be torn open and the stuffing all pulled out,
The weights taken from your paws forever.
Emptied, washed and smudged with sage;
made soft again
when sore hands brushed for hours, very gently.
You lost your name.
iii.
You will become a leopard, after all.
For love is leopardish;
It waits
It falls when unexpected, and takes its victim from behind.
Sharp and long of tooth, it enters the brain-case gracefully
And with precision
We die a little, every time
And live that we might sustain so beautiful a thing,
Supple, golden
So rare.
***
OK, I swear, I will eventually post something other than bad poetry to this journal again. There will even be dog pictures from this weekend, and I haven't updated on the parrots in too long. (Gavin is making soft little drawn-out conure cries in his sleep, and I'm up late again).
It's been a very long, hard week, which I'll probably be writing about later. One thing that happened was that I inherited a bag of plush, and one of them apparently had a poem in him. I'm getting a lot of mileage out of "love is like a leopard eating your brains," perhaps more than I ought.
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no subject
Date: 2010-05-26 02:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-26 04:16 am (UTC)http://community.livejournal.com/parrot_lovers/4358955.html?nc=122
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Date: 2010-05-26 11:26 am (UTC)