poetry • BRHFL • Page 2

dyad

Sat 2006.04.01

by brian hefele

why is it that you jitter
when i touch you?
and i can feel you
radiate warmth
a feeling like curled up by a fire
but we are not, no
we are just two nude statues
toppled together.
i touch you,
you jitter,
and you crumble apart.
your trembling heart
bleeds to the ground
and spatters like a rorschach
that i stare at, frozen
for endless hours,
trying to make meaning of you
and all of your details,
so complex, like a mandelbrot.
you smile and stare at
me… staring back at you
and for just a moment i stop
decoding, analyzing, understanding
who and what you are.
and in this moment i reach out
to pet your marble-smooth lips
and with your sweet-kitten giggle,
you ever so slightly
jitter.

one of my more sexual pieces from the past, laced with unrealistic romanticism. i simply cannot help but love love, such is my lot in life, i’m afraid. this one relies on some weird imagery, and i guess that’s okay, because it’s surrounded by very accessible and much more poignant imagery. if you get the references, fine, but if you don’t i think it still holds up. i’m not sure how much i like that approach, some of my pieces rely fairly heavily on jargon, simply because i am very strict about the precision of my words. and my attitude has always been, well if it doesn’t make sense, look it up. and if it does, i think there’s a deeper connection between writer and audience. but when it’s watered down like this, i don’t know. anyway i still like this pretty well. though i don’t know much about kittens giggling.

(if it turns you on)

Wed 2006.03.01

by brian hefele

posted in love, metablog, poetry, writing

if it turns you on
one final time
i will recite this poem
in semaphore
as you drift away
forever,
slip off to become
just the subject of some
vers libre
from an occasional lover,
with words, always quick
to turn you on.

this one is untitled, which is astoundingly rare to me and suggests i never actually got it to a point where i considered it finished, or finished enough to be canonical. it’s got a couple of things going for it – it’s a metapoem, which definitely became a big part of my writing around this time. or, at the very least, a thing that i was very willing to play with. it’s also a love poem, a sickeningly sweet vomit of my emotional immaturity cum hopeless romanticism. it’s short, it’s untitled, and for whatever reason, i still think it’s worth clinging to.

poetry is love.

Wed 2006.02.01

by brian hefele

posted in love, metablog, poetry, writing

cigarette flicked in his beer
like in some silly sitcom

that couplet has ended
in ten quick words, ten quick
minutes for that couple to end,
he tested her humor with some
one-liner crack like i’m not one
to be coy are you one
to be easy? her cigarette flicked
in his beer and she
stormed out, her stamping
stampamplified,
like in some silly sitcom
and the laughtrack reel
rolled what a silly ending
to a silly metaphor,
poetry is love.

this piece i still rather enjoy. it’s quick. not just short, it has a fast pace to it, and i’m happy that i was able to control that. it’s just kind of silly and playful, in contrast to a lot of my work. but it’s also rather cynical, i suppose, and that’s very much me. it’s sort of about love, but not in my typical grasping, emotionally immature voice. i guess because it’s about failure. and to me, finding success in love is rather unrealistic, and my more ‘romantic’ pieces are thus quite fantasies. this is also a metapoem, although that’s less the point of it than many of my pieces from the time. but it is unavoidably aware of itself, wrapped up nicely at the end. though it’s more playful than i can imagine myself being right now, i’m still pleased with this older piece.