Reading, skimming John’s poems, I came away with a sensation that he is/was incapable of truly loving anyone but himself. It was obvious to me that I have tried to make a silk purse from a sow’s testicle, and since sows don’t technically have any, you can see the dilemma it caused.
Two end poems seem to be a half-hearted attempt at revenge, or perhaps in answer to my manuscript. Hard to say which – the very last poem, it’s definitely a stab at me, but what did I expect,? So few poems about me, per se—is telling. Guilt. An obvious S&M section for KT, his former student, oh, how cute. I only hope no one will mistaken me for her.
And all those poems to the other women—it could be me. It could be someone he has not yet met. He’s able to get graphic, his poems to her, so full of S&M, and I am not turned on at all by them. I find it in incomprehensible that one human being would willingly torture another soul in the name of love, or lust. I feel like I need a shower, and to put out a disclaimer, I am not Katie! I am not the woman between the lines. He is so full of himself, there is a little room for love.
I can see the difference between men’s writing and women’s writing. He makes pretty connections and observations—maybe a line here and there, but he doesn’t stay with the metaphor behind the poem for any length of time. He’s too busy being intellectual and smarty-assed. The feelings are very shallow. He gushes, but has trouble emoting. The emptiness within him, filled with seductive images and clever ideas.
I come away feeling like he never got it. About depth, or who I was. All that registered was anger, fear, and revenge. What is missing is the tenderness, the love – except maybe for the one about Romeo and Juliet. But even that is tinged with the Big No on the lack of commitment.
Why oh why didn’t I see that the clay was no longer malleable? That he was so empty, after all? Friends tried to tell me but I wouldn’t listen. This incredible hindsight does a little good now. The a-ha! I’ve learned a lesson of emptiness in a full bowl Thank you Michael Daley.
And I am experiencing anger anew, seeing the final insomnia poem, he was planning to leave me in August and I was the last to know. I had to find out through the grapevine. It was a set up, his glib cowardice, his feet his fear of facing himself – all along he was posturing and that’s the violation, the treachery. He was using me to hide from himself. I was a pawn, a victim and he doesn’t like my anger—because it’s too honest.
I’m surprised there really aren’t any poems about our breaking up, at least not a poem where the relationship is central to the poem. All is periphery, a glistening sleight of hand. It’s another layer, a maya veil tossed into the poem. Of course he may have others and they were no good, but he is so self-indulgent, he would’ve put them in, so it’s safe to surmise that there are no new surprises, no poems to me, because he never wrote them.
My poems about him are definitely much more blunt and angry. I don’t think I’ll have much more to say about him in the future, that anger is well spent, and I don’t want to re-introduce new dialogue. Let him publish his vainglorious poems, and my name will fall into obscurity in his circles, until it stands alone, no association with Tragasol, or is it Tragaluz?
Maybe, in this light, it is better to let Falling to Sea Level fall and drown—no matter how good the poems are. No need to resurrect the dead. How different we are as poets, what different voices. I will not glean his poetry for ideas and lines, the way he did mine, to throw back lines at him, like undersized fish, nor will I reclaim my stolen images. Let him keep them all.
Once I was flattered he stole my spontaneous images and recorded them in his journals. He has made them his, and he sinks beneath the weight of theft. Vain man. He assumed my poems were to him rather than others, as if there were no other man in my life.
Now I see him how the women who came before before me saw him. The before and after photo—not a pretty sight. Beware of the waiting room! Any last regrets must be put aside now, because, on some level, he will always be waiting for me—and not necessarily as a lover. There is an unbreakable bond between us. Like that final executioner, not content with my life, he wanted my death, not content with my death, he tried to resurrect me, but I am stubborn, even in death. Transformation.
He keeps talking of what a good friend Barbie is, whoever she is—probably one of Katie‘s friends. Or should I say KT, daughter of cannibals. He wrote poems to her the way I wanted him to write poems to me. Particulars, not generic ideas. Ugh I’m still disturbed by the sex slave stuff all that leather and blood. Where is the loving in all of this?
Some of the poems in the MS became the basis for Lord of the House of Dawn (Bombshelter Press, 1991).
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