Springs of your history, hunting your geography
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!
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Coordinated by Jasna Gugić, a poet and writer from Croatia
