CarrollBlog 6.2

BEFORE EVERYTHING IS OVER

by George Wallace

before everything is over i would like to make love to you

the same number of times as a gentleman knocking on a

door that will never open for him.

the same number of times a mirror fails to reflect the spirit

of a ruined man. the same number of times a young woman

discovers in the middle of a noisy party

that she is alone. i would like to make love to you like a man

leaning his face from the window of a passenger train to catch

one more look at the one woman he ever

truly adored, but now he must leave behind. like a circus

performer looking up at a ceiling of trapeze rings, crazy

lights and precarious high wires,

knowing he will never climb that high. like a washed up prize

fighter reaching for the canvas because it is his only friend.

like a bum reaching for a twenty dollar bill

that is blowing across a busy boulevard. o i would like to

make love to you before the passersby pass by before

the falling sun falls out of this world

and into the next, before the brown bear of winter falls

into his magnificent winter slumber. i would like to make

love to you with my forehead

pressed to your naked waist. with my platelets pulsing in

your veins. with my brain on fire and snow falling on your

hissing flames o i would like to make

love to you a hundred times with the shuddering knowledge

of you, with your frozen smile and untraceable fingertips.

you with your indecipherable dreams.

because i am doomed to live with you even when i am

without you — you with your incomplete shoulders. you

with your rainbow colored lips.

you with your empty hands. your perfumed silence, your

perfect elegance. you, with the sunlight that leaks out of

your darkness and into my world.