I draw rain drops in silver Sharpie
Across my window
The glass is ice against my fingertips
my cheek
The world is quiet here
Until you call
Until you call
My world is quiet
I scrawled that bit of verse in the margins of a cluttered notebook page five years ago. I was writing about God. How when our minds our quiet, that's when He speaks to us. That's when we receive answers, courage, peace.
I often find myself seeking that quiet space to discover what I need. But I also come back to those lines when I find myself in love or involved in a passionate friendship or an intense project. There is a type of stillness in the world unless I'm with that other person or working on that project. But when engaged everything is motion, music, motivation. I become, just as when God speaks to me, fully alive.
Cris DiMarco, my publisher's Senior Editor, is also an author. Actually, that's a requirement at Windstorm (IDP's parent company) -- that all staff be published authors and/or published artists. Cool. Primarily, Cris writes science fiction and fantasy but a few years ago she published two volumes of erotica. Reviewers adored the books ("1001 Nights Exotica" and "1002 Nights Exotica") and they even got picked up by Book of the Month Club. The stories are smart and sexy, interesting, emotionally charged, and almost all of them are true. One of the collections even included a sweet, romantic story about expecting the birth of her first child. "Thinking person's erotica," wrote one reviewer. "As beautiful as they are steamy."
The stories all have unique twists. One of the few poems (selected by Cris but written by her partner) reads:
Obsession
I stared at you for days
intently
possessively.
You belonged to me.
You... you were already mine.
I stood at my window
saw the sunlight spotlight you
the spring wind set you trembling
rain turn you translucent.
I knew you were waiting for me
even when you knew nothing.
The day I made my move
there were others around.
I had my pick
but I wanted you.
You weren't perfect.
You had your scars.
But you were glorious,
your texture, your bearing, your life.
And you were not
as I had expected
beyond my reach.
Years before songs like "(You're) Beautiful" (with its nonsensical lyrics), I loved this poem of longing and desire. I loved it because I knew it could be speaking of so many people, things, ideas. In the back of each of Cris' erotica collections, there's this incredible section called "The Stories Behind the Stories" that provides backstory for each selection. You can imagine my delight when I read that Cris' partner had written that poem, in all sincerity, about... a leaf. An eighteen inch big leaf maple leaf.
I guess size does matter ;)
E.J.
P.S. The poem quoted above, written by Jennifer DiMarco, is part of a copyrighted work by Cris DiMarco called "1002 Nights Exotica" published by Windstorm Creative. I'm not a lazy punk. I took the time and asked permission to use it. I was granted permission by Mari Garcia, head of Windstorm's legal department. If you'd like to reprint the poem, then you need to email Ms. Garcia at mgarcia at windstormcreative dot com. Just finding a poem, image or story on the Internet doesn't place it in the public domain -- no matter what your buddies or your uncle or the dude at the computer store tell you. Don't be a punk, okay?And don't get me going on file-sharing, bootleg rare cards and copyright infringement. I'm already on probation with God (see yesterday's blog) and He hates it when I start swearing.
