“Rooms”

 In passing from room to room

I close the door

And hear the lock click.

The abandoning of one space-

Hopeful promise of another.

 

In a middle passage between lovers

Transposing between them,

Haltingly, like a car

With a bad clutch,

I think how much easier it would be

If I could do like the rooms:

Enter, leave, close the door, and step out anew.

 

But love is messy,

Memories, arguments, tears

Follow under the threshold and through the keyhole,

Become little green snakes that curl around my ankles

Tripping me up,

Tiny sharp fangs make me mindful

Of vague misgivings.

 

Also, embers of a burnt out lust

Beyond ability to evoke the necessary fires

In body parts once shared with delight.

This pallid thing knows the route to my heart

Still uneasy, done in,

By guilt and remorse.

 

Memory….

Raw materials of regret

Unfinished business,

Unspoken words,

A dream of a dance without music,

Fading touch, attention.

 

Yet still,

With nagging thoughts we were too hasty,

Too caught up in the rigor mortis of righteousness,

Too bound to the self, unbending–

Makes me turn back to that door and fumble the lock.

 

 

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2009

 

An email from Jingle Nozelar Yan (JP at Olive Grove ):

“when you post on word press or blogger, you do not have to pay or ask permission in person. which is what we count for.

maybe one of your fellow posted your stuff. will not publish formally in books.”

It won’t work, this blaming anyone else.  Jingle stole my blog and put it on her blog. She really has no imagination, and can’t write worth crap. This  issue has gone to my attorneys. She’s flaunting US copyright laws and knows it.  It’s now a legal matter. However, I will continue to post this statement at the end of every blog piece here.   I don’t like having to do this, but Jingle refuses to delete my blog from her site.   Don’t read my work on her site. If you care about literature, you will go to the source, and bypass a fraud.