Longing

I just want you to listen to me. I won't touch you. I adore that delicate hand and the soft down of your neck. I just want to hold you in my arms. But that's not important. Truthfully, I've never known exactly what I want. I just want the edge of my desires to melt, dissolve while you hold me tight. I imagine if you comforted me in your tight grip and I penetrated you just a little, my yearnings would subside. I want you to awaken my feelings. When my heart is away from me I am depressed. Nothing in the daylight delights me. I just want to lean into you a little, taste your skin and your saliva, your blood, just a taste.

I am making a fool of myself. I want to find in your body something lost and unfulfilled in myself. It's only me aching, searching for a more complete sense of myself. I'm only fighting for my life. What I am asking for is impossible, some unrequited hope and desire. I should see the warnings, my limitations. As for vulnerability, earth sends me news of coming passions and I ignore the fine print of the heart. I just want to squeeze you a little. I know that I'm part of the story of pain and loss and I feel that somehow I am the last to know. Give me a little time. It's so late to realize that dreams may fade in the dawning of despair. I realize that I will never grow another inch, never learn Sanskrit. I reach out for you as for that song of truth. I want to know why that luminous glow that comes from God cannot be found eternal in this body. My secret is that once I thought that knowing my limitations would kill me. It hasn't yet. I just want to bite you, to feel my weight against you. Just take me. Earth says accept yourself or faith will be a tentative thing, like a distant cousin, lonely for the family of knowing.

I can't sleep for my longing for you. You are cruel to give me this insomnia. I toss and turn in my sleep. I lie hoping for your limbs and forbidden fruit. My body reels under the rude monarchy of sensations. It forces its citizens onto the slave ships of sex. You are laughing at me. You know my cravings when night's loneliness comes stalking, putting me through my phantom paces and fevers of confusion. Don't squirm when I tell you this. I've told you before, haven't I? Did I tell you about my heart's desertion in Barcelona? Betrayals, dark roads, reunions, bright roads. Did I tell you how I saw you everywhere in Thailand, how I followed your promise into nights in Cambodia. You think I exaggerate. You think I want to make you over in other's images. Have I told you that I lost my mother not long ago? Only in dreams and shadows can I see and touch her again. Did I tell you that I am now an orphan? Over Eastern skies I saw my mother's face as a sunrise, a deep orange rinse of a warm world's garments folded softly over the clothesline of God.

Richard Meyers was active in the Berkeley, California, Civil Rights and the free speech movement of the early sixties. He went to India to serve in the Peace Corps for two years after which he continued in India, Central and South East Asia for another four years working as a teacher of English. Later in Europe and the United States he helped develop Alternative and Co-Operative communities. Participating in many aspects of spiritual community organizing, he contributed to a number of works in Journalism, Film and Fiction Publications. His short stories have been published in Moondance: Song and Story, Kenagain, Web del Sol, InPosse Review, Spinnings and SFSalvo. He has published two volumes of his collected poetry, The Journey's Loom and Striptease of the Soul through Gondarva Press. His poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. His other works include the novels The Journey That Never Was Made, Alms For Oblivion, Under Indian Skies and A Maze for Infidels. Prolific in all genres, his short stories, essays and plays include Rivers of Babylon, Dark Rituals and Last Train to Simla. Currently he teaches English at City College of San Francisco.

Email: Richard Meyers

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