Eyewear hereby offers a litte pre-Valentine's poetry on the cusp of the great day for (and of) Eros. Much love to you and your beloved (and other loved ones).
Hotel Oriental
sometimes the visible is the deeper world
Christmas lights in Shanghai
the rain is her leaving
a hotel is a room that you buy with minutes & days
the woman next door keeps your dollars in a tin box
a body is also a place you can wait in
gambling, until the end of longing
& thin walls let desire through
like rain-obscured radio or the click-click of vinyl
how you love is how photographs will remember you:
in dark suits, hair slicked back, slim moustache, a body
carrying itself like a film actor’s
the rain projects its film on the green wall
& its ghost, its furrows
its slinking unfolding rivulets of time
every drop that falls has hurt you in its motion
each drop her heel in the hall, her
coming forward, going away
in the hotel you shared as each body shares its double
its mind, with some element of the visible
crossing through small square panes
of the opaque glass that sometimes appears to be
all there is of the present & surface, texture & reflection
how it stands behind us, this flat, deep screen
all that was good is a picture or a song
of her moving between lingering smoke & a dream
of a nightclub in Hong Kong where
nothing destined was wrong
if properly lit, red blue green
all that can be loved can be heard & seen
sometimes the visible is the deeper world
Christmas lights in Shanghai
the rain is her leaving
a hotel is a room that you buy with minutes & days
the woman next door keeps your dollars in a tin box
a body is also a place you can wait in
gambling, until the end of longing
& thin walls let desire through
like rain-obscured radio or the click-click of vinyl
how you love is how photographs will remember you:
in dark suits, hair slicked back, slim moustache, a body
carrying itself like a film actor’s
the rain projects its film on the green wall
& its ghost, its furrows
its slinking unfolding rivulets of time
every drop that falls has hurt you in its motion
each drop her heel in the hall, her
coming forward, going away
in the hotel you shared as each body shares its double
its mind, with some element of the visible
crossing through small square panes
of the opaque glass that sometimes appears to be
all there is of the present & surface, texture & reflection
how it stands behind us, this flat, deep screen
all that was good is a picture or a song
of her moving between lingering smoke & a dream
of a nightclub in Hong Kong where
nothing destined was wrong
if properly lit, red blue green
all that can be loved can be heard & seen
poem by Todd Swift
[note: this love poem originally appeared in the pamphlet Natural Curve, from Rubicon Press, Alberta, 2006]
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