First Kiss

By A.J.R. Mennon

The first light of day falls upon my face

Awaking hesitantly in my musty room.

One look at the clock reminds of the race

I rise up and walk toward the window sill.

The coffee flows as I sink on the desk to resume

What was left off yesterday, it needs working still.

Six months now passed slouched over this dusty desk

Crafting, contriving, piling, scratching, lines and strokes.

Doubt chokes, hovering over each stroke and line

“Will this ever even work? Is this great—or is it only fine?”

Six more months now passed since any fire in me awoke

Yet faithfully I sit, hour after hour, yearning to be blessed.

A hundred reveries blitzed by…all aimlessly played out;

Duty still performed in attempting all that could work

As fragmented visions with hints of a lost passion lurk.

But creation is imperative before light’s lost, and allowing myself out.

Cryptic stories coiled up in an exhausted mind—

When have I last from these reams, anything of worth mined?

Half past the third hour: no insight arrives nor revelation comes; 

Tempted to maroon the work in chaos, again undone

Upon the brink of desertion, frustrated by dissonance

Just in that instant I felt around me a hallowing presence engulf,

A warmth radiating from the pen— it is the imminence 

Of something pure; the vestiges returning of a long-lost impulse. 

The yellow paper’s but darkened by gleeful tears, 

As the mid-day sun burns through the window glass. 

The spectral presence grows and I know she’s arrived at long last 

Standing silent behind my chair, the first time in all these years. 

Can’t turn around to lay my eyes on her or else I know, she shall disappear. 

I face the sun, yet feel the warmth from behind grow; I feel her touch through me pass. 

Branded by the sun, I let my eye-lids fall momentarily –

On my forehead’s wrinkles the swells of the softest lips arise 

Like the fall of a petal over the face of barren stone, only 

Unlike it, I feel in depth infinite its touch— and can’t help but roll my eyes. 

Electricity and fire combined surge through every vein and sinew 

Feeling ice and flames abreast, this was the moment, I knew… 

I knew, in the deepest coves of my heart— something rang right

Like I have been lifted from this musty room, and placed over 

The summit of a tall structure, with the burning sunlight

and the higher airs married; frightened and delighted by a power

both familiar and alien knocking, how I’m pulled into a state trance-like,

The weight of a universe descends within, pours out through my fingers. 

Rivers freed from antiquity and posterity in perfect harmony

With vengeful rage and desire, issue forth in a flash and flow; 

Old temporality dies— all tensions merge into unified beams. 

Essences of truths in the deeps that once eluded, now gleam 

And return on steeds and lions; Oh, she appears never so readily 

But when she esteems the hour right, she fans the eternal spark and into me blows!

By A.J.R. Mennon