"Your end should be one inapprehensible to the sense, then it will be a god always approached & never reached[,] always giving health. The aim is all; not the methods. The true poet though he drink wine and eat like a cannibal is really temperate, because he proposes to himself a spiritual & unattainable & immortal good in those melodies which draw him on; he has no disgusts."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson (JMN 8:12)
Although I can't exactly lay claim to the temperance that Emerson champions here, I share his sense that poetry often exists as aspiration--that distant desire that stirs at odd hours when drinking a glass of Malbec or chomping on the femur of a friend doesn't quite satisfy us and the combination of indigestion and baffled animal sensibility makes us receptive to the muffled music coming from the house next door (you know, the one with the offal-free hardwood floors, built-in bookshelves not made of bone, and plenty of natural light). That half-heard melody, so Emerson says, is the cue to our moral awakening, and we stumble out of whatever lair our brute sensuality and minimal teacher's salary has provided for us, into the dark street where we mistake the landing lights of planes for stars. Perhaps it is lucky that the true encounter with poetry can never happen--we merely wander the streets like Raskolnikov, snarling and beating our breasts at intervals for the beauty that only comes as perpetual rebuke to our heretofore lives. And how awkward would it be, standing in the well-lit doorway with paw upraised, as the gentrified party suddenly goes silent--the stalwart tropes, the pretty polyptotons pause and cower--and the six-pack of Schlitz we brought as a housewarmer is covered with a patina of blood? Well, no doubt, you are nodding your head at this point: been there, done that, so what? But before you toss your lion's mane of kingly indifference and go back to gnawing on zebra gizzards, here's the point: this blog should be cannibalism for the high-minded, draped with the delicate limbs of contemporary poetry, where we can chew on the new, really sink our teeth into it. So, whoever you are who've stumbled here, whatever blood is on your cheek or sleeve, won't you pull up a chair, stay awhile, and so to speak dig in?
I so wanted to be the first comment on your blog, it did not immediately occur to me that ,while I may know a thing or two about cannibalism due to my brute tastes in books and cinema, I,in fact, know nothing about poetry. Nevertheless, as my intent trumps my capacities, here's something...suitable-ish
ReplyDeleteCannibal Love Poem
I grow so sad when thinking on
the rate as which one heals;
specifically, you would be gone
in six or seven meals.
Your fingers – lovely, never rough –
would hardly fill one up;
your precious heart holds not enough
to scantly fill a cup.
And worst of all, I hardly might
get more than one prize cut
before the blade too deeply bites
into some vital gut.
And then, my love, you would be through;
and I cut to the bone;
the lovely meal I’d made of you
I’d have to eat alone.
If only death could be delayed,
my most delicious love,
you might look on as I filleted
you and all cuts thereof.
A ghoul in life, I have been called,
and so would be in death;
let us then, love, be both enthralled
as zombies. What loss breath?
Our love is worth more than such things
as breath and life and laughter;
I long to live unlife with you,
and eat you ever after.