Fantasy* Edit: Two Poems

Fantasy

I’d like to love you
because
there are parts of me I don’t think we’ve met yet
and I would love to explore with you
the dark gods you draw out of the forest of my soul.1

At thirty,
I am still no David, nothing so finished,
nor any work as pensive as Rodin’s.
I remain rough, unchiseled,
and what an adventure it would be
to see what shape I take beneath your hands.

I would be fascinated to discover
how you would paint me with your fingertips
and what kind of occasion I could rise to
forged in your fire, your clever quips
and your sun-hot temper.

I would rather melt in your anger
than be steel in the grip of any other.

I’d like to love you
because
there are parts of you I don’t think we’ve met yet
and though in ways I know you better
than any of your lovers ever have or will
<span style="font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; “>I would love to explore with you
who you are, who you’ve been,
and who you are becoming.

After all this time
I still treasure you as though you were words.
I have read and written so much of you
and I want our story to be more than fiction based in truth,
more than just graffiti on the walls of your heart.
I want to be your poet and protagonist,
not some vandal in the night.

I want to know you
with the full force of a kitten’s curiosity;
dive into the depths of you from the stratosphere;
feel you rush through me, the adrenaline in my veins.

I want to fill myself
with the joy of your discovery,
sate my love for learning by making maps of you
with the care of a cartographer
and measure our satisfaction in the same meter
by which Aristotle weighed a life well-lived.
 
 
* For your edification, this poem makes references to 1D.H. Lawrence’s writings on Ben Franklin, Michaelangelo’s statue of David, Rodin’s sculpture of The Thinker, and Aristotle’s philosophy regarding how one can measure whether or not a person’s life was a good one and if he or she was a good person.
 
Dulcinea
 
<div style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times; font-size: medium; “>
Who knew that in this day and age
we could still find courtly love?
When you need me, I’ll be there,
your knight in shining error.
I’m a little bruised and my armor rather tarnished.
I’ve tilted at a few windmills in my time.
What can I say? They looked like dragons,
but I wouldn’t think twice to break a lance
on a few more vanes for you.

My sword’s been in its sheath a while
and my shield’s a little battered.
My heraldry’s a Rorschach rampant,
but I’ll let you decide
whether it is hare, dormouse, or hatter.

Yet no matter the stains upon my tunic,
the holes in my mail or the pot on my head,
if you’ll tie your favor on my arm
I’ll be the Lancelot to your Guenevere,
the Tristan to your Isolde.
If Camelot went down in flames tonight,
six hundred years from now
they’d still tell stories of you and I
for I will always be
your knight in shining error.

Even if I fail you, if the windmill, err, the dragon wins
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I’ll get back on and take up my quest once more.
I may do the wrong right thing,
or do all the wrong things right
but I’ll save chivalry from it’s dying breath
and keep its banner flying
while I charge headlong
into my next hopeless song.
 
 
 
I’m definitely calling this one a poem. Poetry may be too kind a term.