Adam Fieled (editor, West Philadelphia, USA): "On Love"

What tide is the realest, which pulls in a kiss?
     The rigor of reaching the thing-in-itself,
from subject to object, chaos to bliss,
     our frail intuition of heavenly health?
Our love is not molecules, dumbly colliding,
     nor is it knowledge, formal and static,
         nor is it accident, reasoned and plumbed—
it's real, meta-rational, soaring and gliding,
     felt like an earthquake, bringing up panic,
         taking our parts and achieving a sum.

The greater part of love is sacrifice—
     flesh intermingled, tensing (push!) tingled,
this is the secret I learn from your eyes.
     Giving my body, knotted, single,
tiny eruptions that come from my tongue;
     plunging down surfaces, slicking the flesh,
         thoughtless as leopards or hurricane winds—
watching you shudder, watching you come,
     rapt in the throes of an innocent death,
         giving my life to an inch of your skin.

Thus, we trade in secure oblivion
     for reckless reality, messy and fleeting.
Such is the cosmos— creation, carrion,
     motions of molecules merging and meeting.
Nothing is lost but notions of self-ness,
     hard ideations that close and clatter,
         rages of ego that strain at their walls—
nothing is gained but a sense of the deathless,
     "there-ness" of spirit, "there-ness" of matter,
         ultimate "there-ness" that scares as it calls.

© Adam Fieled 2003-2025

originally published in Hinge Online