“The End of an Affair”
reworked tanka
I said, “Don’t love me,
‘we’ can never ever be”.
I said another
held my heart, my hopes, my dreams.
She heard, but Caz did not…’hear’.
We had days of fun.
Romping nights of lusting too.
Overshadowed by
that other lover lurking,
behind doors of memory.
Caz wanted to ask
if my, “Darling I love you”
whispers were for her
or aimed at the other one.
I could not answer truly.
I had no answer
Against insecurity
No reassurance
no unguent, no platitude,
nothing but poignant silence.
Through winter evenings
We stared at embers glowing
in our Queenie stove.
Eating buttered toast. Drinking
special recipe mulled wine.
With each fond gesture
Met with a trite, “Thanks, Darling.”
And clink of glasses
we played games of ‘make believe’.
Caz, and I, were both victims,
Clinging together.
Lost souls. At best, second best.
Damaged goods, flotsam
Detritus overboard from
ships colliding in the night.
Her heart was broken
when I said, “It’s done. No more”.
I stare at embers
now, alone, and wondering.
Wondering and wondering.
Yes, excellent write in your own inimitable style. One for the coming huge cultural festival in Hull?
Thanks, no I am operating a one man boycott of next year’s bread and circus pony show up here – that said, there will be fringe stuff unconnected to the bean feast and i might do one or two 🙂
I enjoyed this, Coolhermit. I think the ending conjurs up the age old conundrum ‘What if?’ We ask that an awful lot in life, I think. Skillfully crafted.
Thanks Griff, we spend our lives re-arranging the furniture of our past. Sometimes it makes us feel better 🙂
I notice the use of ‘answer’ in quick succession so in my personal document of this poem I tweaked that. 🙂
How the effing hell can we get to edit our stuff on this site – I submitted one for monday – it needs work but I cannot get to it – I’m just going around in circles – the old site was really straightforward – this new version seems dead awkward – i’m sure it’s really simple but I cannot find out how
Log in, click on “You”,at the blue heading line, and release, when the list appears, click on “scheduled” and choose the scheduled piece either “view” or “manage/edit”, you can also go to edit from “view” . after editing don’t forget to “update” and that’s it.
cheers 🙂
After “update” you can click on “view post” at the top near the title and see how it will appear when published. Or go via “You” into the list again, choose scheduled and click on “view” instead of “manage/edit” of the piece you want to see.
I just went to delete my deeply frustrated message and found you’d answered 23 seconds earlier – I could only find my way to this poem hence my absolute miffedness – sorry 🙂 the long hold on the ‘you’ button! Just the job – 🙂 Rick.
On every page of a submission (this one for instance), look in the right side column at the box called ‘submission details’. If you are the logged in author of the submission, you will see a link to ‘edit submission’.
Thanks – I was so frustrated – and then once I got the info i found that my bird of inspiration had flown – t’was ever thus – and I could not remember what exactly I wanted to change – but no worries for the future :0
Coolhermit needed to find one that was scheduled for publication and edit it, not one that had already been published.
This was the only entrance to my stuff I could find – I was staggering around like a blind drunk with a lost door key – I knew gothman would come to my rescue – and he did 🙂