“It Must Be Time For Lunch Now”, 1979, by Francesca Woodman is what Magpie Tales has chosen to trigger a response from those who join her creative writing meme. Here is my contribution.
All-Consuming Love
The forks of Spring are whetted
With tines sparkling sharp,
Like the ravenous spikes of my appetite,
For love…
As nights grow short, like my patience,
The days growl with increasing strength,
With accelerating insistence, their every minute elongated,
For love…
My body cries out to be devoured
By all-consuming, flagrant passions,
Burnt to a cinder by raging conflagrations,
For love…
As Spring ripens, like a cherry reddening,
And buds give way to flowers and seed,
My cells swell and pullulate, dividing,
For love…
My heart cries out to be crushed
Like a ripe pomegranate whose ruby seeds,
Yearn to be sucked dry of their ichor
For love…
For all-consuming love eats and is itself eaten –
Like acid quickly dissolving all it touches and is itself neutralised,
Yet retaining all elemental constituents,
Becoming enriched by that dissolved.
And upon sublimation the thing devoured is reconstituted
By strange alchemies of erosion, purification and crystallisation,
For what else is love?
With tines sparkling sharp,
Like the ravenous spikes of my appetite,
For love…
As nights grow short, like my patience,
The days growl with increasing strength,
With accelerating insistence, their every minute elongated,
For love…
My body cries out to be devoured
By all-consuming, flagrant passions,
Burnt to a cinder by raging conflagrations,
For love…
As Spring ripens, like a cherry reddening,
And buds give way to flowers and seed,
My cells swell and pullulate, dividing,
For love…
My heart cries out to be crushed
Like a ripe pomegranate whose ruby seeds,
Yearn to be sucked dry of their ichor
For love…
For all-consuming love eats and is itself eaten –
Like acid quickly dissolving all it touches and is itself neutralised,
Yet retaining all elemental constituents,
Becoming enriched by that dissolved.
And upon sublimation the thing devoured is reconstituted
By strange alchemies of erosion, purification and crystallisation,
For what else is love?
Beautifully - there's no other word for it - beautifully written.
ReplyDeleteYou captued a longing in that face...Very nice.
ReplyDeleteThere would never be a failing grade in chem class, biology class, human sexuality class ... if students were treated to poetry like yours. Exquisite.
ReplyDeletebig W O W!..
ReplyDeleteJJRod'z
Once more Shakespeare leaps to our aid with a jolly good title to get us going!
ReplyDeleteLove your colourful, reversed image, and am curious as to how you achieved it, too!
Well done all round.
Your poem is a strange alchemy, indeed. Nice!
ReplyDeleteI don't come here often enough to read your exquisite pieces. This is beautiful,simply beautiful.
ReplyDeleteIntelligent, erotic, beautiful...
ReplyDelete