PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

[for Lynn M]

Some people believe that ghosts

are only the residue of emotion---

strongly eamanted, usually hostile;

so likely with the Muses' inspiration,

intensely bestowed, received joyously,

despite the shifting sand of prejudice.

First class of the day, high school,

Connie C, always seated just by the last bell,

pushed both shoes off with one deft movement;

then turned to the lout beside her

to say with a smile, "See my socks?"---

every day, the same question, the socks always different.

Her seat and the lout's were both forward of mine:

I saw his lamely uncomprehending grin

as shallow as my desire was deep.

But she never, ever, turned round to show me---between us,

barriers as effective, as insurmountable, as they were ancient.

Consider Mary M, whose hair

was cut like a boy's;

whose slender, lithe body

moved like a boy's;

and whose desire was said to be like a boy's

(although, biolocially, she was all girl).

She never even wore shoes into the building.

Her style was always the same---buttondown long-sleeved shirt;

faded, sometimes frayed or tattered, jeans;

and black (not jet, but charcoal) socks.

In good light I could see how they clung

to the contours of her eagerly flaunted feet

(even stepping outside, into weather);

how they clung to the contours of my desire

(that she could never see, or saw right through).

JJ, the hippy girl was very petite;

blonde hair past her waist; piercing blue eyes;

psychedilic tops and bell-bottom jeans---

the denim flares did not quite conceael her dirty bare feet

(grass-stain and street-grime).

Friendly and without pretension,

she spoke to anyone and all, even me.

One among many is as lonely as one without any;

inclusion and exclusion are entirely equal and indivisible,

indistinguishable,

among the obtuse angles by which

the high school's geomery was plotted,

according to the algebra of exacting, immutable variables,

and the set of permutations of all permissible responses.

Lynn M was the centerpiece of the schoolday;

third period, Classics (Plato's Dialogues).

She favored platform sandals (every day!)---

a single strap and a high sole

(contributing generously to her diminutive stature);

and every day a different pair of socks.

Her preference for certain colors and patterns

(some black, all shades of blue, some with silver spangles)

and (more rarely) sheer tan nylons

(the supermarket kind, with reinforced toes),

coelesced the theme in my poetry.

And when (as always, sometime,

during the otherwise uninteresting lecture)

she slipped those platform sandals off her feet,

she seermed to rise as on a pedestal,

and her smile acknowledged my obvious adoration,

and my own rise, parallel, although it was more seemly to have knelt

(which was neither possible nor prudent in that time)

and offer those beautiful feet my homage

in the only way I had, then, to offer.

The desire to worship them was certainly not platonic,

but, assuredly, it raised me daily, and nightly,

to the realm of exquisitely ideal forms.

Starward

[jlc]