1972: A painting from, a story of

Our Lady of the Tender Mercies

Watercolor 12 x 16

1972-73

Love Flight 1972

She looked me directly in the eyes

Sharply folding clothes with military edges

“You don’t love me anymore,”

Her eyes bowed back to the laundry

I fled out the door

Heart and head burning

Into the chill of Charles Street
knowing refusing she was right

Running from this laundromat

Past the very Florist that beaconed me

To this city, striking my soul

Like a bow from Cupid’s arrow

But today, this Valentine’s day

Memory running flaming cold

in this city I love

Angry at truth and derision

of socially prescribed desire

The romance of child/teenage fluff

Slapped by the angry mother

Across my rude mouth

A week later, in our hotel room

In Manhattan, making violent love

The evil desire to smother

Strangle the breath from her

flee into dark Gotham

From there across the land

Of desperadoes and bonnies and clydes

Disguised from all I knew and who

Running far, from our desire

To be who and what we were not

Running from the sin of being ourselves

Le bohéme n’ était plus

Zoltan and Meg play no more

one last glittering fling

in the Appleland of Oz

Singings song of Weill’s broadway

and the pillared halls of Art

Kissing the lips of Nefertiti

Hiding in the forest as Joan spoke with angels

Howling with the horse in Guernica

Rubes in the big city

Rubes in the rules of love

Back home too the rules had changed

The homogeneous neighborhood

Blackened overnight, 

torched businesses

after harmonous decades

bullets through the window

Our landlord asking us to leave

For the safety of their home

Their black and our white asses

Boston bussing madness, catholic

ugly as baptist blood flood our southern roots

the liberal north a lie

on my freedom trail

The ideal of romance

Safe haven

Dashed in the light of day

We said goodbye with sorrows

That had no central home

Sorrows that float

a lifetime

For the prize of seeing me

running from her

running from me to me

not who I pretended to be

Our love incinerated, leaving

the stripe of sorrow,

on the gravestone of romance

thank you for finding me

Remembering 1972

on

Valentine’s Day 2017