The Lovers’ Chronicle 7 July – covenant – art by Félicien Rops

Dear Zazie,  Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag to his muse.  Visit us on twitter @cowboycoleridge.  Take good care of yourself Z.  Still, Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

i thought this would be easy, it was not,
but i did find a song i never heard, ‘’Promise’’
written and performed by Chris Cornell and Slash
’’We love hard rock and we really miss Chris’’
oh, that voice, will never tire of hearin’ it
’’Do you have a sample of the lyrics’’;
‘’Promise me you won’t let them
Put out your fire, put out your fire’’
an important message for anyone,
do not let anyone stop you from
bein’ you and followin’ your dream
’’Speaking of dreams’’
ah yes it is time for bed
and we have promises to keep

© copyright 2023.2024 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

hey thought of somethin’ new that might be fun; wakin’ up that mornin’ at the Hotel Trevi in Rome, uncertain of which way the day was gonna go, he had been up late drinkin’ anisette and writin’, he found himself fixated on a word that was the title of a Tennessee Williams’ poem, and was till thinkin’ about it when he saw them later at the fountain; a beautiful redhead and a lucky guy, then he understood the covenant he should make with himself

© copyright 2022.2024 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

we were cold, we found warmth
i held your hand and we allowed
close to our hearts what we denied
and as we like, we hold on
to this bargain, only lovers can make
a covenant, entered in this place we
created where nothin’ else matters

© copyright 2021.2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Pale Love, Pale Rider

you give me

movin’, workin’, makin’
dreams to run toward

the sheer buildup
comes from bein’ apart

i held your hand
and we allowed,
to hold each other
close, this covenant

only we can make
entered in hope
late at night
in the cloud,
that place we created
that holds all else at bay

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

“I suppose, I’m most
surprised that you can
leave yourself so open.
Why do you do it?”

to be
to feel again

-a mattress, on the floor,
our silhouettes, movin’
across the wall,
a tango towards
the sheer buildup
of need that comes-

where you fear to enter,
holds what you seek

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

no call to look for the writin’
it is in the verse
the great risk is that i have
but one need

y’all know
i do not believe
in usin’ “like” in verse

love is like this,
or a kiss is like that…
no
they are what they are
and unlike anything

but while cruisin’
through the High Plains
on a recent road trip
i discovered a “like”
i can live with

my needs
are like the trees
on the High Plains
few and far between

and these trees,
unlike the grass,
will not grow back
after a wild fire

much like needs,
once burned
never to return

I refuse to believe those trees don’t grow back; that those trees don’t want to grow back. What we don’t see is the growth—tiny at times—but it’s there. (I hope, like a goddamn fool). Karen

well who knows…
i let want and hope
back in, but not sure
about need
only ever led
to gittin’ burned

Ah hope… the real fire-starter. K

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge

What was that?
Road trip, tomorrow
Oh, hell yes
Seven hundred miles
Darlin’ you know
I cannot say no to you
Your chariot awaits

***

oh yes, we should form one

i to come here everyday
to write, tell the tales
of beauty and sorrow,
and let the feelin’s held
for years go where they may

and you, to come by
when you can to read,
yes that would be good
i am doin’ this for me
but i would like
an audience

or perhaps witness
fits better

© copyright 2017.2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Candlelit back
of my pickup
High Plains starry
night over us
So perfectly
makin’ only
what we can make

If i say; i
can be without
you, over and
over, often
enough: Will it
ever be so

Ain’t no me and you
No forever and
no happy ever
after. Whatever,
what the hell, might as
well. Does not matter

No worries; not
bi-polar. Just
governed by some
hard to explain
dichotomies

Breethin’ deeply
Dozin’, driftin’
Cool breeze blowin’
through the window
Be there shortly
The totem spins
Now to find you

The lost ones; out there
wanderin’ around
No place to go. Try
to reach for them, but
they cannot be found

Ah, dangit, lost
one. Son of a ……
Despise when that
happens. Does it
happen to you

© copyright 2015 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

I borrowed heavily for this one from Tennessee Williams‘ poem Covenant.

The Covenant

You were cold, I gave you warmth
You were anxious, I held your hand
And you allowed me, to hold you
Close to my heart and I did you no harm

I was cold, you gave me warmth
I was anxious, you held my hand
And as you liked, you held me
Close to your heart and did me no harm

This was the bargain, only lovers can make
This was the covenant, entered in desperate hope
Late at night in that place we created
But the demons could not be held at bay

Today is the birthday of Félicien Rops (Namur, Belgium 7 July 1833 – 23 August 1898 Essonnes, France); artist, known primarily as a printmaker in etching and aquatint.  Rops met Charles Baudelaire towards the end of the poet’s life in 1864.  Rops created the frontispiece for Baudelaire’s Les Épaves, a selection of poems from Les Fleurs du mal that had been censored in France, and which therefore were published in Belgium.  He was closely associated with the literary movement of Symbolism and Decadence.  Like the works of the authors whose poetry he illustrated, his work tends to mingle sex, death, and Satanic images.  According to Edith Hoffmann, the “erotic or frankly pornographic” nature of much of Rops’s work “is at least partly due to the attraction these subjects had for a provincial artist who never forgot his first impressions of Paris”.

In 1857, he married Charlotte Polet de Faveaux.  After the failure of his marriage, Rops moved to Paris in 1874 where he lived with two sisters, Aurélie and Léontine Duluc.

Rops once wrote: “The love of brutal pleasures, the pre-occupation with money, and mean interests have glued onto the faces of most of our contemporaries, a sinister mask in which the perverse instinct mentioned by Edgar Allan Poe can be read in capital letters: all of this seems to me sufficiently amusing and characteristic that well-meaning artists should attempt to render the look of their time”

Gallery 

prints and book illustrations

Les Sataniques and Les Diaboliques

Mac Tag

thanks for stoppin’ by y’all

Fiction is freedom. – Susan Sontag

I suppose I was most appalled that you could leave me cut open, my heart utterly gone, without anesthetic or stitching. – Sylvia Plath

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. – Oscar Wilde

The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek. ― Joseph Campbell

Love is the bone and sinew of my curse. – Sylvia Plath

We must be moving, working, making dreams to run toward: the poverty of life without dreams is too horrible to imagine. – Sylvia Plath

There’s that sheer buildup of need that comes from having been away. – Seamus Heaney