desire

Flying Compartment

~ jacobalden ~ Leave a comment

Bind me into a story
I never felt anything I read, not even once
What sentence wouldn’t deserve pleasure
like the fall of a glider resting against the mountainside

Awaken me at a right angle
Intimacy is not the accident you wanted, not right now
A number of swooping birds are feasting
perhaps it’s ok to die to satisfy hunger

Cover me under the pain in your chest
If only he were deeply closeted, a woman on the inside
He asks me this only to look away
given that it’s safer not to soar

I felt something, like a hard shell around a soft desire
This sport is irresponsible, impossible, and sad
And still unable to ask you close

He will circle higher than the current
Generate standing waves of love, triggers point downward
Toward a restful death
without the friction of my hips

feel our pasts : look away
feel we’re pilots : doubt it

take off your subjectivity
take off your sex

I want to do, he had learned how I trace the more he wanted to
This fall will give, or hit an end, like an accident, like nothing he’s willing to ask
I let go, no longer numb, climbing in spite of continual descent

He will think about the instruments of height
Get within the current, ask me to try
Snuggle up into a thermal
a cloud of our shirts left behind

What are common causes of shoulders?
Your hips and locks on planes?
What is just a shame?
a lesbian trapped in flight

Warm air is irrational
Were it possible to find myself feeling his body
Morning Glory tells him to take me several times
Resting so amazing
Traveling inside a deeply closeted woman
I won’t push him to be the things I smell
I just watch his breath
He collapses where I begin

suede

~ jacobalden ~ Leave a comment

The sounds of your mouth rattle my brain
Hollow me out
Marbles tracing a jittery pendulum
Across concave metal
Hollow me in

Should I fall in love with him?
Should I not fall in love with him?

Scared Scarred
Scarred Scared

Insert my fingers into your shoe
Pull you out
Pry suede from cotton lick your ankle
Rest my nose on the ball of your foot
Pull you in

Should I fall in love with him?
Should I not fall in love with him?

Scarred Scared
Scared Sacred

vessel

~ jacobalden ~ Leave a comment

I came twice thinking I’ll be irresistible
But you were, absolutely
Tentatively you assert yourself
I am not that
I am not what they say

I know you in your imperfect perfection
Second hand seams along the contours of your body
I see the colors now
Your colors, my colors, the sky, and the trees

I’m mute to tell you look
Amazing
Beauty

I’m cool to say it
Nice
It’s
…

But you know what I mean
hanging on the edge
follow you foolish

Can you think of a vessel
just the right size to slide your hand inside
and feel around for…
I can’t feel my legs

I am jealous of your clothes
rest on your frame
against your skin

I thought to take off my tie
unbutton my shirt
releasing my heat
to burn against you

Open your drawers of secrets
the beautiful things that you love
and hide
I will tuck myself inside
you can find me

take

~ jacobalden ~ Leave a comment

I described a fantasy of intimate victimization.

He let me grab the fight
shifting roles within a distance
We live in difference
wrecking each other completely

I tried to become a resource.

He told me he was a cynic
such a good one
We reflect on everyone’s face
taking solace in punishment

I wrap my hand around the room.

Love and watch his mouth,
flushed with shame,
We are gutting out the drones,
because I am coming

trying to walk with a man

~ jacobalden ~ Leave a comment

My poetic remixes are based on how I learned to draw as a kid by tracing. I rewrite the poem in my own words, with my own experiences, memories, and sensations, as a way to trace the feel the flow, style, rhythm and meaning.

Rich’s “Trying to Talk with a Man” has been analyzed as related to her divorce, a realization of the end of love, gender trouble, the intimacy of dead ends, projection, co-dependency, and war.

I was struck by this poem because it resonated with the explosive tendencies that have existed in my close friendships with other men. I walk a fine line between a longing for camaraderie, physical attraction, and a desire for platonic intimacy, all of which, alone or in combination, trigger my gender identity panic.

remix of Adrienne Rich, “Trying to Talk with a Man”

In these fields we are testing bombs
that’s why we came here.
Sometimes I feel safe under the canopy of trees
Free to submit to the force of waters that smooth stone away
I see it like I see myself in you
Partial, deep, alive, holding, ready to break open
We run breathless as the rain soaks our skin

What we’ve had to give up to get here–
whole LP collections, plays we enacted
we were heroes, looking through windows into some other life
my love letters, your suicide notes
sunsets across the frozen lake
we could pretend we were free as children

Coming out to these fields
we meant to find something we never were
driving among careless robins and cornfields
We use a language whose grammar negates pain
You swaddle me with familiar silence

Punctuated by the cries of tired toddlers
reminding us of the limits of our choices
everything we were saying until now
was an effort to blot it out–
Coming out here we are up against it

Out here I feel more vulnerable
with you than without you
Ghosts rise from the road into the sun
rainbows disappear from view
We talk of past lovers, indiscretion
describing our heartaches as if they happened to someone else

Sirens approach and you look at me like an emergency
Your dry heat feels like power
Ignore me and walk ahead
as stars in my eyes demand your attention
reflecting lights that spell out: EXIT
Talk softly, walk closely against me

We go on talking of the danger
as if it were not ourselves
as if we were testing anything else

close

~ jacobalden ~ Leave a comment

Today you leaned into my arms
wrapped around your vocal chords
I thought of you more than anything
the lack of you wrapped around my head

Does anyone notice?
Does anyone care?
in this bored room of bureaucracy

Tomorrow I learn how to live in my mind’s eye
listen to the skin below
My arm jolts against you
lean back into me

in our split satisfied connection
Could I cry?
Could you come find me?

Yesterday you sat beside me emotional
place acoustics on the fabric you chose
You are waking me, reckless
I’d take your head resting on me in the morning

Should I say?
Should you know?
in sweet sex I’d pull you close

Sometimes I feel like learning how to stay on the split
my back marked by hot heat
We are on two planes
mind and rumble of you in my mouth

it is nothing much in the physical world
Will it be the first time?
Will you worry too much?

Always as close as close as close as close as close as close as as close as close

we could be calmer,
but you are rising in me

open

~ jacobalden ~ Leave a comment

Come into my body with fierceness in your hands
I can be yours
Make me merciless and I’ll catch you
I can be your boy

Descend a ladder into the sound of my voice
I can be open
Let go at the knees and I’ll want you
I can be open deeply

Follow me without your clothes
I can kiss the fall
You are willing to be alive and inside me
I can kiss the fall of your defenses

We are willing to feel wanted
I can wrap you in leather and hands
Reach for me, press up my boy
I can surround you in chains

You might think it’s not possible to fall
Make my mouth a possibility
Fleeting gestures of soon to be
Break my desire, be strong

Break off your eyes
The lives we’ve made so far
Protected from accord
Call me down your mouth and will

Never let me off my knees
Kiss me where I fall
Come to me at once
Break off possibility too

Be my body
Hold your throat open
Let go in the way you want me
Never let me take you wrong

I’ll stumble all over over you
Get on my throat
Open me wide
Linger behind you

Bring your ladder to my door
Be here right now
Come in your clothes
Be my boy

Let me wrap you
Bind you here in my mouth
Surround me with your want
I will you

stuck

~ jacobalden ~ Leave a comment

I clean him, wash his hair from the vomit of killing,
he starts to kill .
So I find myself in the ultimate taboo,
holding it now,
grateful to those who will die after

I move away from the victim here,
no matter .
He can’t grasp the lost grip on his face,
no accident, pure violence,
I can’t bring myself to

I lost my keyboard, writing it out with fluid onto the floor,
equilibrium .
I find myself lost in the grip of possibility
of a different world,
a trigger about

I delicately exchange narrative for the inevitable,
let go .
I can’t grasp the lost grip on love,
manipulation,
only opportunities to get caught on

Back in self-protection mode,
he stumbles  .
He finds himself in the ultimate taboo,
the silent death in my eyes,
no empathy such as longing for

turning

~ jacobalden ~ 1 Comment

The air outside is vulnerable. I consume myself for wanting to turn you inside and hold you there. My throat has been contracted for signs of these things that I’ll never speak.

I wrote a poem while looking at you at a symbolic remove, intense in the damaged shreds of us. I close my focus when it narrows to find me ugly. I have the fantasy of you. You were looking at me too. I want to ask you inside. I was afraid of sleeping beside you, of right and shame. I want to ask you about sensuality. You say yes to symbolize my conscious control, but then I just want to feel taken by you.

And maybe in this place I think about, you are always talking and wrong. I don’t quite know what is what. I close up so much when I try to kiss the rules. In that place with you I block myself from thinking as a child. But I want to get lost in your mouth. I want to be close. I want to be wrong.

If you are watching you still don’t quite know how awful it is if anyone saw what I’ve thought through my eyes? I hate what I was, afraid of you. So many layers of guilt if anyone saw what he wanted. He put his mouth for a thousand lashes of me without leaving my mouth for as long as I could. Pretend like about making out. I’m repeating old lines, flicking my words into your ear. But I can’t even talk about being held.

I’m thinking about what I’ve noticed when you are inside. These things are too embarrassing to write, even while alone. My friend said that you say I could make your lips. I can love things that are too direct. What if anyone saw I want the possibility to soothe the pain.

I notice when you are on the edge over shame and I can’t say yes or no. Maybe if I thought of you, really asleep, slack jawed. It inhibits my desire. I could. Pretend like it turns you but you only want to be cool. What if I imagine conversations in my own friendly mouth. I think you were looking clever and it’s too difficult, too real.

I get caught. It so directly seems like it turns you, sitting softly in the side of guilt and shame. I’m still here, even if I thought these things I’ll never speak. I intended to be with you through that small window and needed. I know how to incite and write about how awful it is. So many layers of skin around your softness is open to my fingers.

I chose you when you caught me, but then again, you inside. I would take any of its indirectness. Comfortable. Not literal. Verbal sparring. A man who consumed himself because he wanted. He put his mouth, feeling stupid passion of skin and it suits me too. I want to say it shouldn’t. What if I think so hard to say yes, to say yes, to want to write the things that are close. I can’t because it’s with you inside. Softly in its indirectness. Comfortable. Not literal.

My friend said I was afraid to be a better writer. It’s too direct and I imagine saying it kills something. But I also hoped it could turn you inside. I can love things about being in the air outside.

notes on an experiment

~ jacobalden ~ Leave a comment

It’s not a controlled experiment, mixed up as it is with coffee, alcohol and the onset of a cold. I am compelled to write in the dark with the bright screen of the tablet fueling the insomnia. My thoughts race faster than my heart. I’ll try to subdue my feelings by restraining them with words.

Chocolate is longing disguised as a promise of satisfaction. I once had a lover who ate only chocolate and drank only wine. Passion was just hunger. I never thought to look at the experience, only to analyze the causes. She rejected me. I protect myself by feeling nothing.

I agreed to your experiment out of curiosity. Wait. More honestly, I agreed because I want you to understand me. Sometimes I think you do, but your reflective gaze makes it hard to see. What I would give to watch your eyes soften. I’m drawn to the sharp edges of impossibility. Chocolate is like any of my addictions; a test to push and risk falling, cut and face blood.

Sleep is impossible. There are scuff marks on your leather boots. I want to remember exactly the words you used to describe your perseverance while breaking them in. Your hands express so much. Meanness has a satisfying sting. Tenderness is bliss. I dream of you and awaken to resist letting go. There your arm lays across my chest, heavy with sleep. I feel your watch tick. I want. I resist wanting. Chocolate has no effect on me at all.