The Hustler at Dawn

THE HUSTLER AT DAWN

One young woman kept me up late,
made my little village all new.
I wanted to be inside her privacy,
to place my mouth upon her world.
To do everything at once
and have it be perfect.
The purpose is to reveal the body's desire.
To aggravate the celebration of trying,
and maybe succeed.
In my room now, I can hardly rest,
my thoughts are tumbling in a leafy stream.
I've decided to spend this month alone.
To grow, I guess.
Seems I am always trying
to manage leaving Karen.
We had the marriage,
made the sacred consciousness
and lost it.
So I'm here this morning
in the rumbling afterlife of that beauty.
Each moment is an occasion of trying
to string things together.
The dark with the light.
The opposites that tear at me.
I'm so weary of my secrecy,
the random notes tapped out
in a lonely enterprise.
I long for the time when
I was held tight in my sleep.
When the existence I led in the day
could be forgiven by night.
When a woman was more to me
than an adventure,
and love was part of life.


Barry Tagrin

Posted over on Hellenic International Studies in the Arts