"What I write is like letters to myself that I would then permit you to read." Jules Renard The Hesitant Hour, the first book of poetry by R. P. Weissner, is a remarkably personal, sometimes sensual collection that reveals, in a language as intimate and painful as any being written, the depths of haunting regret, desire and renewal by which we confront love.
The Hesitant Hour
poemsBy R. P. WeissnerAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2010 R. P. Weissner
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4490-8364-9 Contents
Ordinary Magic...........................................................1Short History of the Pines...............................................5Ready....................................................................6No Laughing Matter.......................................................7Self-Portrait as Contemplation and Doubt.................................8The Undoing of Lingering Doubt...........................................9Object Reasoning.........................................................10Weathering the Stones....................................................11inbetween................................................................12Birds Then Silence.......................................................13Man on Fire..............................................................14Passive Resistance.......................................................15Talkback.................................................................17Among The Beautiful Illusions............................................19another story............................................................20Kimono...................................................................23Bumpless Route...........................................................24The Hesitant Hour........................................................25The Final Say............................................................26Garden Party.............................................................29CHANEL No 5..............................................................30Speechlessness...........................................................31Faith....................................................................32Lost.....................................................................33Checks and Balances......................................................34Folds....................................................................35She Was All These Things.................................................36Be-Bop A-Lula............................................................37End of Story.............................................................38Self-Portrait as Pain and Keeping........................................43Sea of Dreams............................................................46On the painting Dans la campagne by Henry Lerolle........................47Almost Happy.............................................................48Measuring Your Own Grave.................................................49Pull.....................................................................51Maybe....................................................................52Parting at a Wine Bar in Phoenix.........................................53"This is just the way it is, no nearer to the truth".....................54Deconstruction...........................................................55Extreme Makeover.........................................................56That Which Can Unwish Itself.............................................57Gravity..................................................................58Summer of 69.............................................................59The Strange Habits Poets Keep............................................63Not So Long Ago..........................................................65Recognizing Home by the Color of Rust....................................67irregardless.............................................................68Wanna Play?..............................................................70"I write this in lieu of touching you"...................................71The Origins of the World.................................................72There Are Stars..........................................................73I Don't Ask Why..........................................................74The Waiting Chair........................................................75"I'm never sure what is or is not".......................................76The Burning..............................................................78Waterfalls...............................................................79The Tulip Poem...........................................................80Never Too Late...........................................................81The Singularity of Desire................................................83Whisper..................................................................85afterword................................................................87
Chapter One
Short History of the Pines
What stories were le untold? I returned home and stood for a long time looking out the window,
watching the fog roll in across the meadow, watching the light change to blue, deepening gently: a woman inside my head calling my return.
Ready
Every now and then I become self-loathing trying to close the gap, moving within that inaccessible given.
There isn't much I don't want to try but seldom do I finish much - living in the unknown.
Why is it that the winds a en some of the sea grass while others bend gently, as if forgiven?
I do not know about the mechanics of such seductions, how one moves from summer to fall in a different time zone without disassembly,
when intent meets reality, fulfilled at last: after-shocks of passion, geometric bliss.
I always wanted my poetry to finger her in my absence, to hear her cries of ecstasy across the emptiness, calling me.
And the perfume of my salvation that that might draw me back once again - I am ready for it now.
No Laughing Matter
Shadows stretch across the floor, waiting, it's a lonesome pastime, better left to sailors' wives.
Did you to hear the sparrow's song calling from the tall grass?
It's raining again. Seeping through the crack in the window pane, forming black coffee colored stains on the freshly painted sill.
Like the scoop of an oar, part of you pours out of me. The sound of frost covered grass as you walk out from the house, almost daybreak.
I am still unsure whether your talk is an invitation to action or a substitute for it. And I'm feeling like Florentino in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera.
More coffee, vapors, surface refractions, searching for a sign, a likeness of you. The last song plays, silence.
More silence.
The coffee is cold now, and I fail to see the humor in it, but then ...
it's no laughing matter.
Self-Portrait as Contemplation and Doubt
Every morning I stare into my coffee and see my own reflection, and alone into its depths my soul wanders, separating from the near to become the far,
to make me want you more, here, where the morning air still chills, tenderly,
to see your form sleeping under the sheets of doubt, until you lift them an invite me in to warm you,
wanting something that is not something else.
The Undoing of Lingering Doubt
We're not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be. - C.S. Lewis
And the undoing works out its implications without suffering humiliation or further frustration:
She had come to me to near the end when there was little left to give; but I gave in willingly, hoping
in part because of vanity: one last symphony still unplayed, that tone poem of fear and doubt owing away beneath me,
not embarrassed, not frightened ... it was like an act of forgiveness that revenged itself on me and decides to let me be.
Object Reasoning
Don't object, seek fulfillment. And if you can't be with the one you love, Love the one you're with. So goes the song. You could turn back. But it's not the end of the road, it's the beginning, So turn here. You've come this far, just like me, looking for the same thing, Nothing ever comes of stopping at the borderline of flesh and dream. What we are looking for is not lust-driven, But something else.
Taking that first step is always the hardest. Raise your hands and lock your fingers with mine; The rest will come naturally.
Weathering the Stones after Chang Yang-Hao
As if gathered together, layered one upon the other. A mountain stream, on the borderline of spring. The river stones sing revenges of love and neglect, then repeat again in endless solitude. I turn away and pause to lament here where our dreams once owed. Change, freshened by downpour played by shadows. The spring rain: glistening once again. The spring wind: whispering once again.
inbetween
It's like trying to learn a new language, reading between the lines of what you say and what you don't.
Are you being cautious or just aloof?
Looking at the puzzle pieces and studying the shapes, the male part joining the female part should be a proper t with no unnecessary force.
But I am confused by the landscape and the time difference and the sound of rain that drips from roof tile to roof tile ...
with regular uncertainty.
You reenter the conversation somewhere in the middle and I stumble around trying to catch up. What was it you said about being stuck - inbetween?
It's a predictable delay, an everyday disconnect that has me questioning the purposefulness of this journey into uncharted hemispheres.
Could it be that my being marooned on this vast heap of emotion for so long has le me completely unprepared and ill equipped to reassemble meanings?
I row out to the center of the lake and watch the rippling of the moon, a blue-white iridescent haze resembling an out-of-focus discourse of inconsistency ...
and all I can do is just breathe.
Birds Then Silence after Li Bai
Finishing my wine, I welcome dusk, fading sunlight fills the folds of my dreams. I rise and watch the moon reflected in the stream, Birds are silent, so is my heart.
Man on Fire
Let's suppose for a moment
forgiveness is not a constant.
In theory self defense ends in self infliction
carried beyond the limits of sacrifice,
a surviving re until your last day on earth.
Passive Resistance
All things are possible -
something else takes hold
moving us beyond guilt
down sinuous roads, black
and shimmering like molten
asphalt floating effortlessly above
distant oceans never reached.
There is no comfort
in the world, and
only fools expect it.
Oblige yourself not to
learn everything, or else
you will learn nothing. The trunk is bound
and put in storage
least we deceive ourselves
once again, the breath
of it's breath that
leaves behind erratic conclusions;
Knowing how the story
ends changes the story.
Talkback
It's over and done but to what end? no more emotional bloodletting I thought you would do the right thing,
a recognizable need nothing earned or borrowed but you're not buying it what's already been said in chronological order
when the body meets with memory (kneedeep) in bone running into walls it comes to this a dramatic last breath
gasping for understanding as if things become clearer (revelation) according to your values and the value you place on them
a debt to be paid tit for tat give one, take one without trial and sentence in the name of bliss
assuming nothing, starting at the beginning it's over and done I thought you would do the right thing (anyway)
Among The Beautiful Illusions
From every direction it was like walking in a hall of mirrors Suspended within a restorm You appeared, and all sense Of direction was lost You saw into the future Embracing its fls For what mattered more And never said a word.
another story
"Would you like to stay for dinner?" "Sure." "How do you feel about spending the night?" "You mean will I sleep with you." "Well?" "I'm not all that hungry...." "Neither am I."
* * *
She lived for a time in China but did not offer the circumstances that brought her there, or why she le . Her only possessions; a small book of poetry and a silk robe that smelled of rose petals and rain water.
"It's completely sheer with delicate hand embroidered vines and iridescent winged insects, it's a little disconcerting at first, but when I lay on the sofa in the moonlight their wings seem to flutter whenever I move."
* * *
The moon shimmers in green water. White herons y through the moonlight.
The young man hears a girl gathering water- chestnuts: into the night, singing, they paddle home together. - Li Po
Chapter Two
Kimono after Michael Ondaatje
He brought with him his espresso pot to the former painter's studio he rented he could be satisfied with this. A large room with sleeping alcove, the morning light, wood floors, he could be.
A dog is barking in a field.
He loves the view of the mountains to the east the starkness of the interior - the oriental carpet he lugged cross country
Anticipation.
In an antique shop he admires a kimono - midnight blue, vines and dragonflies. Would she loan it out?
He explains, she returns a knowing smile, Foster's old studio, the morning light, it is lovely this time of year ...
She brings the robe and undresses in the alcove
The sun breaks the mountains
Bumpless Route
There is no bumpless route, no easy path to follow. I'm not ashamed to say that I have lost my way on more than one occasion, in my virtual game of pinball against the linear lifelines I refused to pursue. So here I am stuck in a traffic jam of my own making, frozen in the present and waiting for the light to change.
The Hesitant Hour
Less a measure of time than a response,
weightless, in its unanswerable quest,
the indiscriminate order of light
falling through ice burdened pines,
while my burning lips and fingers,
tremble and fumble up the staircase,
silently, invisibly, to tug and unclasp
your skirt, your halter,
moistened with luminous indecision,
seeking gentle embrace
neither here nor there.
The Final Say
- I like solitude, even when I am alone.
Into my mind the tremulous cadence slows, allowing an unending note of sadness in.
As if the ocean could unravel my desire.
Inside us there are secrets still lamenting our sins.
This destination narrows, over the path of least resistance.
Your gentle wings wrap me in pure deep sleep.
* * *
There is no reason to begin again where we left off. Is there?
Letting out the anguish of forgiveness a while longer, just short of forgetting the weight of your beauty.
I was wrong about many things, I was wrong about that.
Our bodies came together with an exactness I could not have expected.
But even my most carefully constructed dreams have a tendency to unravel.
* * *
Knowledge nourished by age is an instrument of prayer.
Memories arc their way like the moon over a dark lake.
Yet so many songs could only be heard as one.
It is mainly from memory that I take notes. But I forget so much.
And all the rest is just smoke.
* * *
In a way, I always knew, the small feathers lingering after you left.
The crust of the world is still cooling while the air is warming, and the moons orbit is expanding at 2.6 centimeters a year. You do the math.
A spice haired girl with the white T-shirt and nipple rings hides her smile behind her Starbuck's coffee because she knows I can't keep from staring.
Apart from all the sensual digression in my life, there are still moments of great discovery.
But why must I act out my problems with words?
* * *
Anyone who tries self-annihilation will be disappointed not relieved.
I am not looking for the last laugh, only the final say.
Like a Bosch painting, the more I see the less I understand about untethered lust.
But the worst of forgetfulness is the clouding of the soul, the lost wonder.
Back there there was a need to see the evidence of having been, the drifting in-and-out of the illusory concepts of life.
* * *
1. All claims of repetition shall be so noted and most certainly repeated.
2. Resemblances all look the same to me.
3. Foreseeing the urge raises no new options, only the old ones.
4. Misery loves calamity, cost is not the objective.
5. It's not that I have been unfaithful; I'm just looking for a little change of luck.
Garden Party
He could tell by the way the light fell across the bed that art required more intelligence then his lanky fingers could reconstruct.
She gave only the barest suggestion - pressing against his arm on the patio - like the last few pieces of a puzzle falling together.
"You know I work at the book store now," she said as she buttoned her blouse.
"So I hear."
CHANEL No 5
Here is the wingless fluttering of secret desire, the artful music of whispers looking down over her shoulder into the void of spiritual impossibility, where the curve of her breast scents the air.
Speechlessness
"What if these were his last words? What if these sentences should be the vision at the end of a lifetime he could never alter?" - Hayden Carruth
In this final translation, punctuated by absence - geologic rifts - words take on an aesthetic life of their own; in absolute silence, crosscurrents of solitude, clashing chords of invisibleness combine in the steady thrum of mystery.
How can you amend ordinary perceptions if everyone interprets things the same way? Will they be taken as my lasts words; the drying-up of the wellspring, an incomplete vision at the end of a lifetime?
* * *
As far as I can tell nothing is just nothing.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Hesitant Hourby R. P. Weissner Copyright © 2010 by R. P. Weissner. Excerpted by permission.
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