Practice

Love at dawn at Burning Man in 2014 phot by Gwendolyn Alley

In advance of Valentine’s Day, we did some fun writing activities in my college composition classes at Ventura College, and I shared some of my writing and my writing process as well. Since the students this week were writing about the writing process and writing practice, it was particularly appropriate. Below is one of the poems I shared from a class publication of many years ago which I hope will inspire them for the class publication we will do at the end of the semester. Here’s a link to my poem “kisses” also; I had students close their eyes and I put a chocolate kiss in their hands! They then used their sense to explore this “kiss” and later I shared my poem which you can also find below.

Art Predator and Daily in Love at 2014 Burning Man

Practice

When you don’t know I’m watching
and I see you like this the cigarette
between your thumb and forefinger like so
drawing in so deeply your eyes squint
your whole body even folding
squeezing every last bit of intimate
pleasure out of the nicotine:

I want to do it too
I want to inhale leaning into the cigarette
breathing in expanding opening savoring

I want to take something deeply passionately
to consume and be consumed
and wonder whether I could have
a sunset or a sunrise in that way:

to take it between my thumb and forefinger
and squeeze it to my lips
take its orange luminescence and taste it
suck it down into my lungs my belly
become full of it full with it swoon with it

Or a rose bush? Could I approach
a rose bush pinch a rose between my fingers
and draw it in draw it deep into my lungs
inhaling it with as much desire as you do your cigarette

If I did this a few times at first
you know after sex after meals with drinks
maybe with my morning coffee or while I’m stuck in traffic
would I become addicted resorting to hunting out rosebushes
to find my brand to get my fix?

If I didn’t get that daily sunrise or sunset
would I get cranky? short tempered?
addicted? would it become a habit? a reflex?

Would I forget to draw in intensely like you do
embracing it breathing it into my entire body
sucking the pleasure out of it
or would it just suck the pleasure out of me?

This more than any other reason is why I will never do it—
I will just watch you when you don’t know I am watching
taking in this intimate pleasure through you
savoring it with you being reminded by you
the practice of being in this moment.

Kisses by Gwendolyn Alley as published in Art/Life Limited Editions