love is in the air...like mustard gas

[This was written about three months ago]


Season of rebirth and desire's agony. It's here, in spirit. Roots stir, beginning their new plunge into dark dampness. Soon, the sexual gear inside blooms will pulsate enticingly with the nomadic pulse-dreams of pollen. Life's timepiece is being rewound. A new cycle of steaming chemicals and tumescent thrusts into the bright air.

For the human male, this season is not that much different from others, romantically speaking. We're ready to fall at the drop of a shapely hat. Romantic love is not what it's cracked up to be. Sure, the brain buzzes pleasurably like a mass of mesmerized bees serenading a forsythia bush. But all that sound and fury also signifies a darker aspect: helplessness. And lacerations, some of which are slow in scabbing over, if ever.

Life is a mystery. Spring is her druidic handmaiden. The parade of royal nonsense moves through forest and village. The fauna applaud in a racket of howls, whistles, grunts, and love songs; the flora break out their sycophantic, colorful banners, which flap and wave in the new breeze like dizzy jesters.

Nature is also helpless. It is being pushed once again into the ancient process of time and matter. Things come together in countless complex arrangements, echoing the nascent forms of life -- clay crystals self-organizing into platforms for cells and enzymes. Things are coming together in a choreography of love and heat. Sentience catalyzing into new hopes. Lips seeking lips.