Friday, May 22, 2009

The Affair

A man, A woman, between them a red hot desire charging through their bodies like wild horses through an open field.
The chemistry between them bellows over like an erupting volcano.
They want to be together if only for this one night, alone in an abandoned boxcar
contemplating, should we indulge in our desire for each other?
This is a forbidden passion and therefore we are shielded from one another.
Shielded buy the cloth surrounding our lips, forbidding us to make contact and explode the passion we hold inside.
Passion so strong coursing through every nerve of our bodies like frost blanketing every object in its path.
The desire is bigger than both of us, the shield is strong.
Can it protect those we married and had a family with?
Only the man and the woman will know the deciding fate.
That is, until the affair becomes unshielded and the cloth has disintergrated.

4 comments:

Becky H said...

Since I enjoy lifetime movies this was right up my ally! The forbidden desire and passion that one should not have intrigues me. You went into detail that made it precise and easy to imagine.

johnc said...

I really enjoyed the way that you included the marriage and family that were outside of the affair representing the obligations we have that keep us from what we want. It almost made me feel a kind of sickness in my stomach the way that people could love each other so much and not be together.

Tina said...

I really enjoyed this poem since it is very similar to what I saw in the painting but was unable to put into words. I liked the "chemistry", the "forbidden passion", and "the desire bigger than both of us".

sallylynn said...

Catherine ~

You have some wild and vivid metaphors here -- the horses in an open field, the volcano, the frost, the shield -- that create the overwhelming emotional power that I think you're heading for and trying to give to the reader. Great work with these -- they become even stronger when you return to them and develop them a bit further, and that's what makes your final lines even stronger, because you're returning to the shield and the cloth and transforming them.

You might consider, in revising, sticking with some of your favorite metaphors a little while longer and see where they go. If you think of these metaphors as their own little movie, then you might work with those wild horses for a while longer and give them some color, motion, and sound -- really make them come to life. If the horses go to the volcano, then they do. But maybe they'll go elsewhere, and they'll cross the train tracks, and they'll slow down at the river, etc. I'm thinking of the poem about the silo and the grain -- look at how that guy develops that terrific metaphor and keeps spinning it out, spinning it out, to get every last metaphoric drop out of it.

Great work, Catherine! Keep going!