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You stand at the window of your hotel
room, naked and still wet from the pool.
Heavy curtains pull back to reveal
palm trees winnowing lazy fronds.
A fountain spouts glass into the
brilliant Florida sky. You feel its deeper
possibilities lift and cast you,
like spray, into the sun. A yearning
infinitude. Your skin burns with it.
All this first class treatment proves
how weak their deal really is:
the black jet that muscled you south
from your city of ice harrows,
this hotel of marble and brass,
bright servants, iced salmon
on pale porcelain, golf fairways
neater than carpet, poolside women
in neon bikinis serene in
the torpor of water and sun.
All of it shouts disaster.
Later you head for the bar.
You sit on a wicker barstool
sipping a tall glass of rum and fruit.
A combo pulses moody tropic jazz.
Slowly spinning fans whisper
in their tireless cradles:
first class, first class, first class.
How could they know you’d tremble?
As sheets of satin booze settle
over your eyes, you find yourself
wanting to drowse forever in this descent,
to fall gently on all dotted lines,
a chunk of pineapple sinking in rum,
one with whom any deal can be made:
just pour on that dark bossa nova, bartender,
and let the music fade blue to black.
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To be submitted to d’Verse Poets’ Open Link Night.
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Note
Although the obvious theme here is the siren call of addiction, the setup is actually this: Back in the 80s I worked a few years a buyer for the local daily newspaper. Through the network I heard about how big companies would try to get Disney’s business (very very big bucks) by throwing everything at their purchasing agents – expensive meals, deep-sea fishing junkets, hookers. And I heard that sometimes they were successful. Closest anything like that came my way was when a drop-dead gorgeous woman tried to sell me a typewriter maintenance contract (that’s how long ago it was). She took me out for lunch a few times and I asked her out on a date (she refused); it wasn’t that big of a deal–not enough money involved — or neither of us really had the killer instincts to close the deal in the grey areas. I thought about all that years later, and wondered what such unscrupulous business would really be like. I was just beginning to sober up, and knew how easy it was to compromise a drunk. From there the poem took on the power of the big night music over anything — morals, conscience, one’s very life — if you want it too damn much.
There is so much here, Brendan. Want to know a secret? C’mere. I’ll whisper it to you. “I was prepared to be happy with just the picture at the top.” She makes my little selkie heart flutter. Or something.
But the poem! What a feast! It’s seductive, and sensual, and awfully sad, too. As a denizen of the land of ice harrows (love that!), all of it was sounding very very nice to me, and I was wondering, why is this a disaster? What’s the problem here? It sounds f*cking lovely.
Oh, but haven’t I been here? Haven’t I handed myself a bill of goods and called it a ticket to paradise? Many, many times. *sigh* Look, if the drink, and all that goes with it, weren’t seductive, if it hadn’t made me feel like delicious fuzzy-edged happiness on the half shell, then I would not have been so thoroughly, desperately, eager to try it again, and again, down to the dancing on the head of a pinpoint of diminishing returns.
How often I tried to recapture that feeling that spoke to me, deep in my viscera. Even after I knew it was never going to work. Even after I knew that all it would get me was sick, and broke, and arrested, and dying. Maybe THIS time. Oh, god. I mean, how could anything go wrong, here, where everything is first class? And do you know what? Even after 26 years of continuous sobriety, even knowing what I know, there is still that pull, in reading this. I know it from the inside out, as you do, and it shows in the way you have described this right down to the ground.
Thanks FB — I knew you were a kindred beast (and yeah, I thought I’d tease ya with that cover pic). 24 years of on-off-on sobriety teaches me that some dark things of the soul (where all that thirst still waits) are permanent. As they say in the rooms, all we get is a daily reprieve from the madness. But 0 how forever powerful that longing. To fall so effortlessly. To drift off just once. To dive all the way, singing Aw Fuck It all the way down. I wrote this in ’91 and the images still siren loud and proud. Writing it down, putting it here, does force a confession of “telling on myself” — that thing of darkness is still me, after all these years, licking its/my lips. Then I finish and go whoa, thank god it wasn’t me this time. Thanks for the generous response, FB -
Oh, and P.S.: if all that is so seductive, it’s because it DOES mirror something beautiful and perfect inside for which the external substances are poor and deadly substitutes. I’m happy to say the yearning has never needed sobering up — just a better place for expression.
Poetry even in the comments: “where all that thirst still waits” … Truer words were never spoken. Or something.
i agree. i saw the picture on top, and thought that was the addiction
anything but
All that glitters in the cunningly constructed paradise machine is not gold, indeed. I see this as the larger seduction of everything real and strong by everything greedy and false that infuses our current empty culture with its poison…such pretty, tasty, addictive poison. Such bright colors! Such soothing strains of lies! Masterfully done, B. A fine fine poem of personal and universal hells.
Thanks H – And you’re right, the seduction of materialism is that everything out there will satisfy all I lack in here. Fill up a hole that turns out to be god-sized. And to buy into that thinking is to sign on the dotted line the deal with the devil, ‘cos once you head down that road there isn’t much chance of getting back. Just got back from an AA meeting where I heard that one of our group just drank himself to death.
Oh Brendan, I am so sorry. That is tragic. And we’re all one wrong step away from destroying ourselves, aren’t we?
I feel a shudder and a sigh, reading your poem, and then the comments. It reminds me of the delicious lie you tell yourself when you’re driving down the highway, irresistibly drowsy, and you are utterly convinced it would be just fine to take a little nap while driving …
Exactly. Who would know? Just a couple of winks wouldn’t hurt anybody. Thanks for reading, great to see you here on the other side of grandmotherhood.
B
love it… confess i’ve read that last stanza 6 times and feel it in every pore… the dark bossa nova, the music fade blue to black…the falling gently on all dotted lines…chunk of pineapple sinking in rum…love it…
Sounds delicious to me … but I too recall the aftermath that is really just not worth it.
a little bit of everything is in here…a sensual, yet lonely feel… and like Claudia, that last stanza had me goin’ for awhile. excellent!
Oh the images here! – one could drown in them and the bossa nova and all… the sweet sweet sinking into oblivion, if only that could be timed, as in plays, with ‘the end’. (I know that feeling!)
A lot of great imagery here. I must confess whe I read poems written in the second person, I say: “No I dont!”
Second person is a strange form of address, but it’s meant as a way of talking to oneself.
i know the escape and once you get there how fragile that paradise can be…delicious visuals though…smooth brendan…
I love this:
“You feel its deeper
possibilities lift and cast you,
like spray, into the sun. A yearning
infinitude. Your skin burns with it.”
Although I read “burns” as “bursts” the first two times I read it.
And this too is just so good:
“Slowly spinning fans whisper
in their tireless cradles:
first class, first class, first class.
How could they know you’d tremble?”
This is a great way to describe the sleepy fog that ensues after a drink or two:
“As sheets of satin booze settle
over your eyes, you find yourself
wanting to drowse forever in this descent”
Thanks for reading and commenting, Shawna — much appreciated.
This is some imagist poem! If it doesn’t do anything else, it paints your reader into the scene in every sensuous way and pretty much in every psychological way – first thinking, what’s wrong with this? And then knowing just what it is! Well written, sir. Very fine!
what things we allow to become torturous beasts holding whips at our backside. what power we have to overcome! nice work!
It’s been a while Brendan so I really enjoyed reading your work again this evening. As someone who has family members with addictions and heartily sick of denial, it was encouraging to hear someone speak from a place of truth. Well done!
I very much like the use of the second person voice in this one. Have always thought that voice makes things MORE palpable for the author to say out loud, while also forcing the reader to consider whether or not this actually is a universal experience that applies to them as well.
The dealmaking aspect of this speaks volumes about the poor way business is often done in a system in which it is all about 90-day profits, too. “Disaster,” indeed!
Odd, but perhaps relatible thought: the word “harrow” has an archaic use: “(of Christ) to descend into (hell) to free the righteous held captive.”
“Ice harrows,” indeed!
It certainly is a gorgeous poem! And the comments are exceptional too.
Until I got to the ‘sheets of satin booze’, I was experiencing it as the seduction of luxury (which obviously it is, too) – to the extent that I started feeling a bit narky and envious: ‘all very well for HIM!’. It wasn’t until I got to ‘first class, first class, first class’ that I was able to stop and remind myself that I have experienced holidays in luxury hotels in my time, and need not grudge. That’s how seductive the writing is!
(wanting) “too damn much” were the opportune words for me here, from your note at the end. every sense drips decadence in this, brendan. both sadly and seductively.
‘All of it shouts disaster’…what you have so brilliantly done here for me is to evoke the reality of seduction… and the hingeing black of satin stripped and smirched. Wonderful writing all through. Hats off Brendan…doesn’t get any more real than this.
An awesome write, and a powerful post. I can relate.
http://charleslmashburn.wordpress.com/2012/01/22/night-rules/
This reminded me of when I interviewed with some white shoe law firms. It was a lot like that.
Great portrait of the velvet hard sell and the devil at the crossroads.
This just sucked me right in to a world I really haven’t known much, if at all. No business travels, no addictions (that I know of
Well, written and very interesting writing.
presented a imaginative and compelling picture of this face. well penned ~ Rose
You’ve painted a compelling landscape of the allure of addiction, Brendan…that hunger deep down that nothing can fill. Wonderful poem and thanks for sharing it.