By Roger Peterson
How close I want to be
to you my love
I smell your heat
I taste the breath upon your lips
And I am made a man
Understand my love
this wall between my longing
and my having.
So small an obstacle
but strong is the fear that keeps
me from your garden
You cannot see me
as I protect your gate
I work hard to be close to you
and I work harder to be hidden
for what if you should look upon me?
Could I bear your question?
Could I live knowing I was unwelcome?
Better to hide close in the open
than to risk losing this duty
But oh how I long to hold you
and you to hold me
in eternity…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Roger Peterson is an active dreamer searching for meaning in his life through human connection and artistic expression. “I love to write poetry because it takes up far less time than sculpting, drawing and painting to express myself. I am living in two worlds as I am emerging from a world of work, work, work to a world of live, live, live. The price is great and I hope I have the courage to emancipate my soul and find a genuine life.”
1 thought on ““How close I want to be””
For some reason that reminded me of this uncharacteristically somber poem by Ogden Nash:
Listen…
There is a knocking in the skull,
An endless silent shout
Of something beating on a wall,
And crying, “Let me out!”
That solitary prisoner
Will never hear reply.
No comrade in eternity
Can hear the frantic cry.
No heart can share the terror
That haunts his monstrous dark.
The light that filters through the chinks
No other eye can mark.
When flesh is linked with eager flesh,
And words run warm and full,
I think that he is loneliest then,
The captive in the skull.
Caught in a mesh of living veins,
In cell of padded bone,
He loneliest is when he pretends
That he is not alone.
We’d free the incarcerate race of man
That such a doom endures
Could only you unlock my skull,
Or I creep into yours.
Ogden Nash