Hello. I’ve been writing poetry.
120. climaxes & denouements: quickie with lila
Hello horizontal lover. horizontal is the podcast about sex, love, & relationships of all kinds, entirely recorded while lying down. Usually, I have a guest or sometimes two (and on one notable occasion, nine!) reclining next to me, or, This Season in the Era of Covid, my guest is sometimes lying down across the world from me …
Hello horizontal lover. horizontal is the podcast about sex, love, & relationships of all kinds, entirely recorded while lying down.
Usually, I have a guest or sometimes two (and on one notable occasion, nine!) reclining next to me, or, This Season in the Era of Covid, my guest is sometimes lying down across the world from me … and we have an intimate, vulnerable, long-form and far-ranging conversation that unfolds over the course of 3 – 5 hours, and gets divided into 2 – 4 episodes.
horizontal is Slow Radio. A kind of stargazing, or post-coital, or loooong road trip sort of conversation. And that’s what horizontality is to me. A relinquishing of pretense. A deepening of voice. A languor that inspires revelation. An invitation to unzip to our tenderest. It’s like consensual eavesdropping. We invite you in to lie down next to us, as we share our secrets in your ears.
Typically, the first half of our conversation is available in all the podcast places for all of you horizontalists, and the latter half is available exclusively to patrons of the horizontal arts. Occasionally I’ll do a quickie episode, which consists of a single intimate story, usually recorded live at one of my horizontal storytelling pajama party events.
This is Season 4, however, my Season of Experiments. In it, I intend to be playful with form and format, interspersing surprises and dancing with theme and time.
The experiment of this episode, 120 is … poetry. I hadn’t written poetry in several years, and then three months ago I went to this Open Mic here in Canggu. The upswelling of personal expression, and the prospect of being on stage again, which is a rush my body craves, so inspired me that I started writing the first of these poems during intermission! You may recognize the subject (and the love affair) of the piece titled “climaxes and denouements” from my part two with Bevin, episode 62. we can be benefits, but not friends. The second poem, “exquisite cupboards,” was inspired by a disappointing young lover here in Bali. Does he know he’s the muse? Yes he does. I read it to him in bed.
They are both love poems, or, shall I say, lost-love poems.
For access to The Full Horizontal, plus monthly intimacy tips like the Fears / Boundaries / Intentions / Desires exercise, become a patron of the horizontal arts!
If you are a non-poetry person, I hope you’ll still allow this episode to wash over you with the same receptivity as you do other horizontal installments. In fact, I’ve heard from multiple not-poetry-people (including my dear friend and guest of episodes 59 & 60, Samia) that they don’t like poetry, but they like my poetry … which is basically how I feel about dogs, and Kristi Ann’s dog Stella. Please don’t hold this against me.
And now darlings, come lie down with me, in Canggu, Bali, Indonesia.
climaxes and denouements
when I was an actress
I used to do a monologue
a young woman
whose father left
when she was a kid
she said
if you drew a circle around her life
her father would be sitting
in a lawn chair
just outside the circle
with his boots on the line
reading a book
so I wrote
in my ire
I cannot have you hovering on the edges of my life
taking up space
I need to be clear
for my man to enter
I don’t think he got the reference
or my tone
which was decisive with gravitas
and regret
he was a Film major and I was the actress
we both knew I’d a particular advantage
my doctorate, he called it
emotional intelligence,
is the technical term
But I told you not to contact me
no PhD required
I told you!
I cannot have you
hovering
on the edges of my life
taking up space
I need to be clear
for my man to enter
So why put your boot on the line?
I know we’re not supposed to be talking right now but.
But?
But what?
Realized you loved me
when the world might end?
Monogamy
throttling you
with its tentacles again?
Ready to be touched softly
down your back
for the second time in your life
with the feathered fingertips of no woman
underneath you
before me
and no woman since?
I may have clicked send before re-reading
I may have said What the fuck is wrong with you?
Why did you send me this
thin
thinnest of emails
telling me
to be careful
because it’s dangerous out there
because it’s serious in the world
DON’T YOU THINK I KNOW THAT
WHAT ARE YOU DOING
Don’t you think I know?
what good is it to tell me
To be careful
What is the purpose
of this message?
I asked for the intent
Don’t you dare reiterate the content!
how dangerous you’ve been
toppling myths
of other men
spun
sugar and air
a confection
spanning decades
Decades! of my lifespan
spanning
a New York Times
modern love
story
I keep thinking has an ending
but do entanglements
have endings?
Just pauses, right? Just lulls.
And then the twisted projectionist
in the booth
of my subconscious
inserts a splice of you
into my night dreams
on a morning, edged by the ocean
[your chest against my back]
poised at the juncture of my waking
[your chest against my back]
so for a split second
I think
I am happy
How could I not
become intoxicated
on you
you know I don’t come like that with other men
you know I came
with you inside me
the first time
And every time after that
you know I don’t drink
avoidance and men have always been my vices
I don’t drink
and I’m still not sober of you
the continents between us
never stopped
any masochist
from any bender
I vomited chai tea.
didn’t want a child either
I said so in my bed
on the day that you asked
and you felt so free, you said
so free
knowing I’d get the abortion
and that must have been the day
that one became required
It’s a dangerous thing,
a myth
to pull
to pray
your Joaquin Phoenix eyes
and the way everything, yet
everything was more important than me
What an entanglement we are, you said, putting your boot on the line
three boots ago
after I told a story about you
but mostly about me
and broadcast it for the world
and called you Peter,
like you asked
which is my gay uncle’s name
and he doesn’t like me but okay
Thanks for that,
by the way
Thank you for not asking me not to tell
my part of our story
Because you know
Stories
they’re the absolute of me
the crux and the crucible
the glint and the triumph
the purpose
and the gift
stories are the way I’m wired
if you cut me open you’d find nothing but climaxes and denouements
and just a few
well-placed
beginnings
which is why I remember details
like the circle
and the the lawn chair
and the book
your college briefcase and electric blue
guitar
your pointy shoes and fast talk
everything
slicked
back
the way you spanked me
as I rode you
as though you were riding me
climaxes
and denouements
when you stood beside me at that party
your hand on the small of my back
even when it wasn’t
your insistence
in the wake
of the first time we made love
with the full force of 20 years of intermittent tension
and care
that there was nothing
so important
that I couldn’t get back into bed
and let you hold me
for 11 minutes long
the empty glass of water
I didn’t want to get up for
that you left
filled
so I could keep
on
writing
It’s a dangerous thing, a myth
a full glass of water
your scent
leather armchairs
and a whiff of being taken care of
I love you.
Peter.
Still.
But get your boot
Off my fucking line.
exquisite cupboards
What have you done with your negligent lovers?
Filed them away, have you?
Such exquisite cupboards
Will you show me
the Dewey Decimal you use
and where you put your text message breakups
and your ghosts?
Compartmentalization
is the skill of the emotional apocalypse
and I want to be ready
to survive
like you do
or
not like you do
but like I do
with say, 10% less wrenching heartbreak.
You do know the Dewey Decimal system, right?
Oh no, you’re too young.
Card catalogs of libraries past
— ancient, inefficient, singular —
One card, one book
One number, one tome
Typewritten — click, click, clack, chhhhka!
filed obediently with a shhh!
There they are
Humble armies of past lives
unlived untaken
roads
an index card per each
a drawer per card
an abbreviation of the time you spent under each other’s
fingernails
rubber ink pads and penmanship
comprehensively analog
because
Old lovers can only ever be pinpointed by hand.
They’re made of journal pages steeped in garages
filaments of flesh memories
incepted
bits of plastic attributed with great meaning
tributary cemeteries of memory
built over silt
built on sand
tectonic plates puzzled
shuffled
and dealt out rearranged
topography
cresting and waving
every time one loves
and loses
And the amount of times I have lost!
I singlehandedly resurrect bygone poets with the veracity and the tick
of my ventricular heart!
ba-boom, tick!
(Doctor always said I had an arrhythmia. Don’t worry, he said. Irregular heartbeats, he said, are not dangerous.)
(tick!)
Is it possible
your drawers
sufficiently categorize and confine
all ice queens
every unfaithful
and each time she passed you over
for the better-looking guy…
Is it possible you’re so good at cupboards
fitting things inside of other things so perfectly
that they hardly open again
pry them though you might
because once
when you were very young
it was some heartbreak
and you vowed
with the ferocity of a double-digit birthday memory
a tenacious 10
whole years lived on this planet
with an imprint
the import
of a television flashback repeated at least three times per season
that you’d Never
Be Hurt That Way
Again
Oh no.
No nono.
Instead you’d leave
carcass after carcass of feminine hope in your wake
ah, you’ve a new girlfriend
i see the carrions circling
You know, on third thought
perhaps your drawers and cupboards,
cabinets and closets
memory palace minefield of loaded boxes
isn’t such a feat, after all
I don’t wanna rob you of your stoicism cred
but for it to count when you lay your liaisons to rest…
You’ve got to care.
And if you didn’t. If you don’t. If you can’t
because you wedged the lids so very tightly
then I’m not sure your Dewey Decimals have much to offer me.
In fact; here:
a gift
This is my filing cabinet
None of the drawers close.
120. climaxes & denouements: quickie with lila
Hello horizontal lover. horizontal is the podcast about sex, love, & relationships of all kinds, entirely recorded while lying down. Usually, I have a guest or sometimes two (and on one notable occasion, nine!) reclining next to me, or, This Season in the Era of Covid, my guest is sometimes lying down across the world from me …
