Erotic Tears

I want to lick your dampened eyes
And kiss your grief away,
But there is beauty in your searing tears
And in your elegant pain.

Your lips, so cold;
Your skin, unresponsive.
Your dark eyes guard a mind
Full of thoughts that are pensive.

Your mournful sobs rack
Your body with misery
But fill mine
With a strange ecstasy.

I seek comfort
In your exquisite sorrow
And wonder if you
Will be here tomorrow.

---

Originally written:    February 17, 2001
Put online:    March 18, 2001
Discussion:    Inspired by My Dying Bride's "The Sexuality of Bereavement," this poem explores the beauty of sadness. I think this poem can be read two different ways. One, the "I" of the poem (from here on, a man) wants to help, comfort, or console a grieving companion of the opposite sex (a woman, quite obviously), but she--for whatever reason--will not allow this. The man hopes the woman does not kill herself, but at the same time he does find her sadness exciting and doesn't really want it to end. It could be something like "I don't want you to be in pain, but it's kind of nice that you are. I kind of enjoy it--your grief, your misery, your mourning." Second, this work could be read as sorrow/sadness personified. The subject is comforted by his or her sorrow, and it may be the only emotion he/she feels as this is the emotion he/she has lived with the most or spent the most time with. In this way, there is some worry, some anxiousness, over whether or not the emotion will be present the following day or further in the future. There is also the implied concern: If this feeling is not present, then what?


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