Collegiate Sentimentalities/Retail Unneccesities

Posted by Matthew Crouch at 22:56

I could quote Shelley, Wilde, Morrissey,
write their words of passion on fine paper.
I could phone you up
but what words could I use?

Oh I need a voice, advice, a vice.
Oh I know - your quite busy
(I'm an explorer in the information age too).

I know though you are human
your heart and body betray you too
(You can't deny this late at night -
especially when you are naked).
I know, I am human too.

But what if you were really Adonis?
(then maybe these things wouldn't matter).
When you finished your time with
Aphrodite and Persephone,
would you really be here in Ohio?

Oh I don't know
(maybe Zeus will allow you to stay)
but maybe I am just thinking too much.
Maybe I am just trying to find more -
more meaning to my feelings than is really there.

Adonis,
I like your life.
I would like to know more about you
(including your thighs).

Does your body ever rule your mind?
I know this could be true
but I still stay awake at night
(half naked) thinking of you!


Written words of mine in ball-point ink on the back of a postcard. The image, a black and white photograph, male torso titled "Francois" by Michael Gibson (undated) - purchased from a Lane Avenue mall bookstore. The early Nineteen-nineties, from nowhere in particular central Ohio, University days. That old 1906 apartment building with all the heavy woodwork and uncarpeted floors that somehow managed to escape ever a coat of paint - old horsehair plaster with countless coats of pastel colored cheap chalky paint. Original hardware fixtures still hinging doors, turning knobs and locks with lost keys. The prairie styled wooden mantled and tile fireplace surround with porcelain and enamel gas flame heater built in - still in place - its horizontal mirror uncracked and crisply beveled edges. Two wide and tall pocket doors dividing the two rooms. The tall sash windows - seven for two rooms - single glazed - unpainted. The tiny kitchen with built in cupboards next to the narrow bathroom with floor to ceiling linen cabinets. The three walk in closets with paneled wood doors. How many State University students from that Midwestern school passed their college days there through rented rooms. The next door music school student playing his violin daily filling my rooms with astonishing music. How many souls passed through those rooms for a small portion of their lives. Rooms built so well to sustain the wear and tear of such heavy use over nearly ten decades of service. Torn down in the late Nineteen-nineties to make way for High Street retail "development". Gone the ghosts of graduates and drop outs, gone the music of those students lives. Students from before and after the Great Depression with their bootlegged liquor. Students from war years - world wars, Korea, Viet Nam. Tea and coffee and toast, beer in bottle and can, cannabis and tobacco shared with stop over friends - talk of politics and music. Oh yeah, the books and notebooks the reading and writing from thinking minds. That mantle clock no longer chimes there its deep Windsor chimes along the quarter of the hours of the day and night. Lives, romance, old bricks and wood unrecorded history bulldozed over by retail unneccessities.