Okay, so I would say I was partly inspired to write this by Sir Philip Sidney's "Astrophil and Stella," but that really overhypes this and will make you have very high expectations for it. However, this is meant to be a poem about someone getting absolutely devastated by love. And it can either be read as 13 short poems or one long poem. This is an experimental form. Also, an intercultural romance theme is explored here. A possible title for this piece could be "rey de mi corazon." Enjoy!
rey de mi corazón (experimental)
i.
I was not a pretty sight to look at when
the tears wouldn’t stop falling and
I cursed my fate every day,
hair thinning, heart breaking, starving myself,
As once again, someone I who I thought I would have forever, left,
But you loved me even when I felt hopeless,
I didn’t know it then,
Back when I owned no elegant dresses,
My neck and hands were never bejeweled,
No one heaped praises upon me as they do now on
my onyx eyes and the way my hair glistens
or the verses I write and the things my hands create,
But you wanted me when
there was nothing worthy of your gaze
Or your listening,
My grief was so great
that it silenced me,
And knocked the paintbrush out of my hands
The dreams out of my mind
ii.
You see me smile more now,
But I’m still empty,
You think I have depth but,
I’m only like an endless chasm
to be filled with your voice, your love,
I’ve always been hollow
but the promise of your touch
could heal the wound of my heart
that you saw agape yet never flinched from
iii.
You came upon me so suddenly,
If things had been just a little different,
With the Fates trying a new pattern in their knitting,
We would never have met,
It was like you wandered into the woods without a map,
And found me as I wept by a stream,
So the sound of it trickling down the rocks could conceal
the sound of my sniffling,
I hoped my tears would merge with the rain,
But instead of fleeing from this dark being of woe,
You embraced me
Under the cloud that thundered above my head
iv.
Now, rey de mi corazón, come rest your head upon my lap,
As I stroke your hair and tell you the tale of a warrior and maiden,
Who you say could have been just like us,
She
Could not pass through the village
Without wishing to escape the gaze of
Men who were more like cockroaches
In the taverns,
Who beheld her
Reddened lips
Her black hair shining
From being washed with fermented rice milk,
Under her porcelain mask
There once was a face
Less perfect
But less bitter,
And she thought remaining invisible
Would have been preferable to this
And he?
What of the warrior, you ask, no, you beg,
Well, he could hardly move under the weight of his armour,
Or was it his sorrow?
Sometimes he thought it would have been better
To have been ridiculed as a weakling
Than to have turned into this thing
That causes vain, silly girls to giggle at his approach,
Mesmerized by the glint of his sword,
Expecting to hear tales of his feats,
But they’re disappointed
When it turns out
He never sharpened his storytelling skills,
And there’s no way for him to tell them that
He feels as though he sold his own soul,
They both would have wept at the perfect line of verse, would have painted landscapes and arranged flowers, would have read the chronicles of the empire not to celebrate the conquests but to lament what was lost,
They,
Happened to pass by the same pond one day,
Though most days are the same for them,
And there is hardly a relief from
Their loneliness
That being surrounded by admirers never cured,
But the lotuses looked lovely,
The heron’s feathers demanded careful thought,
About what colour to use for them in a painting,
There warrior and maiden glimpsed each other,
For the very first time,
Annoyed that the other had interrupted their solitude,
They continued on their way
When you begin to protest this ending,
It will be the perfect time to kiss you,
Satisfied that I’ve moved someone who pretends to be flint-hearted,
I’ll hold you and be amazed
That someone who trains to kill by day
Could have such lovely, youthful innocence on his face at night,
Wrapped in beauty like a delicate flower,
Who Venus herself would have lost her wits over
When you hug me back even tighter, I’ll know
Cupid’s arrows pierced through the armor of a son of Mars
v.
The Christian scholar honours
The philosophy of Greek pagans
As the Sufi mystic
Considers the writings of brahmins worthwhile
There is more respect between
Different civilizations
Than king and queen of the same domain
More understanding between those
Who speak different tongues
Than the sun and moon
Could ever have for each other
vi.
Why don’t you have a seat in the kitchen, meri jaan?
As I knead the dough for the chapatis,
I’ll spellbind you with
Tales I’ve heard of the bloodthirsty gods of your ancestors
and the blue-skinned ones of mine,
Would you forgive me for idolatry, mi amor?
You must know I’m just as moved as you are by
That most praiseworthy woman,
the virgin whose womb brought forth
the one who created the stars,
But I would still burn in a fire for you,
I would still be a sacrifice unto you
vii.
I don’t want the sun and moon,
You bring no flowers,
Write no sonnets,
Strum no guitars,
But your love’s more steadfast than
Any artist who may try to deceive me,
I could never be ensnared by their glittering lies
As they drain the life out of memorized verse
Your love’s not birdlike but quiet,
It needs no declarations,
Yet to them, love’s a grand word,
Their favourite trope,
From stories they’ve read of Tristan and Iseult,
Pressing rosebuds between the pages,
It’s true they do not lack knowledge of the Middle Ages,
But they’ll never have an ounce of your courage
Until they understand this,
They’ll always appear silly
When they attempt to embody chivalry
Your love’s like fossilized shells
or dragonflies in amber,
Not like the delicate petals
That will wilt someday
Your warmth endures
While their promises wash away
viii.
How many times have I dreamed of running away?
Assimilating into a foreign culture, forgetting the past, bathing in Lethe or perhaps
Slithering away in the form of a snake, I’ve always wished I could just shed this skin,
submerging myself as an alligator in a swamp,
Nevermind, you make me forget my own name
And I could always disappear into you
I want you with an appetite that scares me
How have you made me unleash
A feral, primeval, reptilian longing
That this thing we call civilization
Can never contain?
ix.
God has blessed your country with the southwestern desert, the most mesmerizing place on earth,
I do not understand how someone can look at it and say
We need to test nuclear bombs here and we need
The hideousness of paramilitary forces
To desecrate Nature’s harmony
Can the lone saguaro cactus against the sun
With its lifespan of two centuries
Ever forget these crimes?
See how everything in nature is interconnected.
I thought I beheld a Vishnu temple,
Look how Nature carved an Oriental pagoda herself on a rocky elevation!
This land is just as romantic as the East
And in your bloodline there is
Fasting shaman chewing peyote, austere friar carrying books, jaguar warrior wearing a plumed helmet, intrepid conquistador with a lust for gold,
No, I was not born here but
Descriptions of Paradise had reached my ears,
And I no longer doubt they were real
x.
I want your love to be like one of those hardy perennials,
so be careful about which plant you get for me
The golden barrel cactus may be the best,
I want a cactus, not flowers
Were you to get me one I would
Protect it as fiercely as if it were
My firstborn son, Cedric IV
But I know that it would need me even less than you would
I remember buying a cactus once
From a Home Depot somewhere in a dreary Canadian suburb
And I could not believe my eyes when
A tiny lizard emerged from the soil of that pot
Where was she taken from?
She ran off outside somewhere,
The only one of her kind in this land,
Perhaps she was crushed to death,
perhaps she shriveled up
In the cold with a broken heart,
I could hardly comprehend
The awfulness of her fate
xi.
I gather flowers for him
though he does not seem to appreciate their beauty
or know of their meaning
The poinsettia, the Adonis flower,
The Pendant Amaranth, which he does not know
Was once called “my-love-lieth-a-bleeding”
for it looks like the blood bursting out of
a sacrificial heart
like what gushes out of
a cacao pod when it’s crushed
But how can I not bring him these things
While I’m here on earth?
As long as I live
I’ll replace the flowers every time they wilt,
I’d toil in a garden for my love if only
I could be rewarded by glimpses of him
xii.
Ever since I’ve lived here, I’ve always had to hear Canadians bemoan and bewail
The lack of a proper springtime in our country, the fact that there is no season of love
No rebirth and renewal, only the grey slush from the melting snowbanks
a return to the general dreariness of suburban life, nothing to celebrate
surviving the harsh winter that tested the faith of black-robed missionaries
Weakened by starvation and scurvy as they feared dying unloved in this hostile land
Yes, Pan the satyr would never see reason to dance here as he did in Arcadia,
Your heart’s like the barren trees here so you’d fit right in while mine’s like
the desert sunrises that you don’t realize you’ve been so lucky to have been bedazzled by
The ones that are the same colours as the petals of blanket flowers, I’m sure you remember
Seeing them many times, so how is it that I, winter-hardened as I am, can be more like
The refreshing cactus fruit, the flute song over windswept sand, than you are?
xiii.
Sometimes when your strong arms encircle me,
I still feel lonely,
Like that time when my friends turned away
From me, a being of flesh and blood and soul,
To admire an artist’s portrait of a woman
Cold and flat and drawn on a wall
Your hands are on me but your mind is elsewhere
And if you’ve never felt a desire to protect me, it’s because
You were always meant to invade my heart
What an ill-equipped fortress it was!
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