My First Real Lover (Confessional Poetry)

Note: Dispensation Poetry/Confessional: so I refer to the four poems below. I don’t often look back, and process my life into poetic stanzas, unless it is in short story form, traveling, culture and a few other exceptions, and in a different character other than me usually, it seems to make for a better read, but here are for poems that are to the contrary of that rule.



5— My First Real Lover
(Dispensation/Confessional Poetry)

At seventeen, not yet married, there were
signs: that read caution, I was too young, to see them, her given name, Barbara, ah, Barbara — my first real lover; even her face

had signs, even her brother, perhaps a lover; on my wedding day she called my name from the car, honking the horn, pregnant, to South Dakota, entrenched, I went with her

stubborn they were, mother and daughter.
we married, and mother went her way—
and Barbara went with me down the street,
to a motel, at the age of only sixteen.
So it was poorly done, but to some liberation. Alone in my bed, no longer unseen as I had been;
to her — I was a friend: for me, a lover—
and then I learned how to drink, to overlook!

I was drinking a lot back then, a far-away lost soul; that such youth has to suffer to grow; had I a knife to slice off that part of my soul—
I might have done so, and live in a bubble!...

#1706 2-28-2007