POEM: “Pull” — I moved on you / I wanted to move on you

Baltimore art

Pull

I moved on you
I wanted to move on you

Like a magnet under a sheet of white paper
shifting the particles wayward.

Guided: like hands on a Ouija board
or like gravity pulls us lower.

I moved on you
I wanted to move on you

And my body shivered
When I told you what to do

And my mind paralyzed
When your high wore off and you got cruel.

Doll, I’ve been with the cruelest of them all
And it’s the fate I suffered for art, by god.

But to go to the stake for nothing at all
Yes, to crash, and burn, and senselessly fall?

I moved on you
I wanted to move on you

…and the pull
needs to push me on.

Suffering is noble when the tragedy was fierce
And this suffering serves me but not at all.

Sylvie Hill, Montreal, July 21, 2019

Painting