Like a pioneer in an unknown field of flowers.

Charles Renton, a poet and writer from Los Angeles, shares his poetry 

Charles Renton (C. A. Renton) is a writer of poetry, fiction, essays and screenplays who is based in Los Angeles, but heralds originally from the Midwest.

THE GEOGRAPHY OF WANT

I am a cartographer of flesh

Who covets your ears, your mouth!

Your legs, your eyes and your back;

The uncharted territory between your

Imagination and neck.

I explore the liquid plains of the delicate

And the mysterious, mapping your

Passion as you sleep.

I claim your wild smile in the name

Of languid love. I

Claim the caress from the humor

Of your hands in the name of the

Secret country called Ardour.

I want to sip the savage from your lips,

Eat the heat from your native body,

Mapping every curve, every corner,

Every unexplored memory.

And, I traverse your sea of doubt, to the hot

Springs of your history, hunting your geography

Like a pioneer in an unknown field of flowers.

***

NERUDA BY NIGHT

Capture my breath, if you will,

Take away my ability to breathe and

Leave only a deep singular, sigh of

Wonder and a quickened gasp.

You have brought with you a silver

Light, an ethereal illumination that

Shone, radiant, a rarefied feeling

Born out of that breathlessness,

A catch of sudden surprise.

I have wrestled with the harsh and

Come out of it fraught with fatigue

And sadness, sown by another’s

Reckless, mercurial love.

But with just one look from your

Forever eyes, I was caught up in full stride,

Startled, by the unexpected light that

Cut so deftly through the dark

And left me, breathless.

Awe struck, just at a marish moment, by

Your gaze come hithered with a pledge

Of well-honed passion and offers for

Escape, from the mendacity of

Those who are careless with the

Privilege of blood oaths and words

Unspoken, but bound by promised lands.

As we slip together along the edge of

The evening your lunar glow rises with

The night, a celestial desire that burns

Stellar bright, and you return to me my breath,

Full wind, a zephyr that rescinds all the

Perils of the past, leaving only

Your enlightened grace to

Echo in my heart

***

HONEYED VISION

Rolling in the deep of honeyed vision

Flesh running on flesh

Like a sensual tsunami that flows from tidal tongue

To the liquid frenzy of a luscious pink folded pool

That has no end but sends me riding from alabaster thigh to alabaster thigh

Searching for the perfect carnal wave, for after love’s silken sigh.

***

SIEMPRE!

I remember driving along the Pacific Coast Highway, California’s backbone, right after I first came West; scouting for a pristine beach and welcoming waves as a new surfer . . . listening to RIDERS ON THE STORM . . . drinking a Modelo. . .talking to the Mexican girl I had met the night before at the Starwood and who was going to UCLA. . .and spoke far better English than I ever have!! We had an intense love affair for about 30 days . . . until her elder brother outed us to her very traditional parents who had moved to LA from Mexico City while their daughter was in college. To this day I don’t know if it was the fact I was a Gabacho or that my bank account couldn’t even pay for one of their lunches at Bullock’s Tea Room that caused the toxicity that brought such an abrupt end to our short lived but passionate “amorío”! Her name was Berta . . .and I don’t know what impressed her more: that I could roll a joint with one hand while the other one rested on the steering wheel of my Vega or my surfing prowess (I never had the heart to tell her that I was a mere beginner at the time), for the way she looked at me when I came out of water after riding a set and then strolled up to her, made me feel like I could do no wrong and that I was some kind of a fucking god! I remember that . . . and… How her long black hair flowed out of the car window like a raven’s wing as we drove south on PCH that afternoon feeling like we would live forever!

________________ 

Coordinated by Jasna Gugić, a poet and writer from Croatia 

The post The Geography of Want – Poetry from Los Angeles first appeared on Sindh Courier.