OPUS
Performance Poetry Ensemble
Jeremy O'Neal
Undiminished
I want to slip
The world and its weight
From your burdened skin,
Watch it slide and skip
From your naked breasts,
Whisper across your hips
In a silky descent
To the floor.
I want to kiss
The hours we spend apart
From your tired lips,
Lap the weariness
From the nape of your neck,
Caress away the
Bitter from your heart.
I want you
To take me in,
Wrap me with the heat of your breath,
The wet of wondrous depths
Cradling the mystery
Of all that’s ever been.
I wanted you then
No differently
Than I want you now
Or ever will—
Your skin,
Your soul,
Your all
Could never fail
To utterly consume.
Never could there
Be a time where
Ridiculously I
Would not
Want you
Tolerance
I am always left to wonder at the barroom lovers,
the couples that grasp and fumble at each other
just as eagerly as their countless rounds of drinks.
They seem to be always spilling, whether swirling
their swill, the sloppy tumble of words on the brink
of passing out or the ejaculate after hours of trying.
I watch the grifters hoping to gaff the bartender
out of another set of shots, the drifters who cling
to one another out of a sheer loss of anything else to clasp,
the ugly who can’t fuck each other amid sobriety,
the disillusioned pairs who posture the “I don’t care”
yet still manage to look cool in their self-destruction.
It’s not like I don’t have a predilection to get sauced,
to share a jug of wine with my lover under the moon,
talk of our dreams and nonsensical things until dawn
while loving her lips all the more for their burgundy hue.
It’s that she makes me swoon without that purple haze
and what I see in them is in no way the same—
I see a burden so heavy it takes two to carry,
manic nights filled with mirthless cackles
followed by sad, bleary-eyed mornings,
dysfunctional conjoining bred of convenience.
Ah well, let them be merry in their sodden moments,
let us raise a toast to these brave companions of the cup,
tomorrow they’ll wake in each other’s aching arms—
that, I am satisfied, will be punishment enough
Choke on this
The precipice yawns in silent boredom
Like a tyrant contemplating the grape
A trembling thrall waits to feed him next.
Death has the time to be indifferent.
Man finds self-evident a pressing drive
To explain away a lingering soul
Or to some, an unending energy,
A legacy, that after the fall, thrives.
Afraid that this one life won’t be enough
We invoke god to counter the abyss,
Wistfully squandering what could be all.
I’ll not be a man if it’s to be that,
One who ignores the deep black that beckons.
My essence hopes to choke that suck hole
Cover up
Surely I’m as guilty as the next hack
when it comes to the stark lack of sweet love
rearing its red sappiness in my craft,
but it’s not because I’m some stoic beast.
If truth be told I feast on its syrup,
gulping it down in gluttonous scenes
rife with Waltonesque familial revelry
(and not so PG vignettes with the wife).
Why then when it comes to squirting my love
‘cross the page in the medium of ink,
do I balk; gravitate to sourer things?
Perhaps the same reason I don’t wear plaid,
wide lapels, ascots or polyester—
sharing my foppish side with only her
