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Helena Carolinska
A
string of pearls untrue
Your words were wound around
My neck,
Pretty pearls strung a string …
Of lies
That you captured with a clasp
and held fast in your grasp,
To tighten at YOUR leisure.
Who could doubt such white innocence?
Every bead
And letter
Just fetters that
Shone like the sunny soul you showed us
and dazzled me for a while,
To hide the darkness within.
No longer shall you rein
Me in
With your torturous ties;
Worthless Christmas cracker prize:
These plastic imitations, barely cool to the touch
Could never ever melt
MY Liberated Heart.
London 2006.
The red flowers from Spalding and
Amsterdam
(are dead)
My love found you
A
boy,
Poet.
And it sucked the words out,
Sensually …
And made them shine,
Then eclipse me.
So I took the tulips
You gave me,
Out of the water
And into the Sun,
To die.
There.
Because they were too beautiful.
Because you were too beautiful.
Paris 2008.
An apology
We had some good times together,
Didn’t we?
When you would play “Salty”
And I’d be your “Baby”.
And before that.
Before America cast his green gaze upon me.
(his Boston eyes were smiling. I’m sorry)
but I was just trash.
We had some good times apart together too.
When I was there
And you were here
And after that and now?
Now French fools court me in the night.
(my body too young and restless to resist. I’m
sorry)
but I do not dance for them.
Let me
Break their hearts
One by one,
All of them,
(all and none)
Like he broke mine,
Like she broke his,
Like I broke yours.
Let me reconcile this.
Paris, August 2008.
An explanation
That air conditioned summer still chills me to the
bone:
I
was hotter for you than ever before
When you,
You were tepid.
I
have not written to you since then I know.
And it must seem strange seeing as we,
We were friends.
But New York still hurts.
The film of us runs on a loop and
In my days like nights I see us
Running in and out of golden cabs hand in hand
You in your suit
Me in my evening dress
Sharing secrets on street corners
By bars where they knew your name
And me the mystery
From England, via Paris.
Oh the glamour of my broken heart.
I
guess where you’re from they don’t do things by
halves:
In the back of a taxi
Downtown to Battery Park your expensive backhand
Sliced it expertly in two
And arriving at out final destination
I
smile as you open my door
For you were
Ever the goddamn gentleman.
New York, July 2008.
R.S.V.P.
Dear You,
French lover do not send me an invitation
To our friend’s Expo opening
By the Pont Neuf in
Paris,
When I am in
England.
(It is too perfect
And I am still wild,
Not the cool English woman I pretended to be.
But I think you know that.)
French lover you have loved me
As a man when I was a girl.
That was dangerous,
Please remember that.
And finally French lover
Now that I have the true love of another
Do you love another?
I
wonder that.
(Although I know you do.
I
think you always have.)
P.S. Sometimes I think of you
And wonder why I won’t allow myself to fall
For your “simple life.”
And then I remember
French *
Lover.
But oh
French lover,
Why Japan?
Bisou
Nottingham, 2008.
Footnote
French:
The language of love,
Mon amour.
English:
The language of lust,
Baby.
But
“Je t’aime”
They shout on the streets.
“I love you”
Once and under the sheets.
Rather the rare I love you from my English man’s
lips,
Than the je t’aime that throbs from French mens’
loins.
Nottingham, 30th September 2008.
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