To Be Lovers, Purposeless As Tropical Rain

a prisoner is in his cell, jungle country and it is a hot night in august, stifling really. first scent of a hurricane barreling in from the east and the coast has already opened its arms to its lover, the sea.

even a jungle cat needs air, as much as a prisoner lying on a cot in a cell needs air.
okay it is the authorities who have dumped him here. he could have kept his head down, he could have kept his mouth shut. but society is simply too much sometimes. we all know that.

sometimes society eats at the heart of a man, gnaws at his bones. sometimes it is better to be locked up inside, where a man can do less damage to himself and to others.

outside if a man isn’t careful he could beat his head against the walls that surround him so hard he bloodies his mouth and crucifies his brain. inside he can better survive a society that has already bled him down.

in this, he is a beautiful animal, wild and unconventional. untamed and untamable. admirable really in his delicate exile. particularly to one prison guard, who hates his job, and takes little satisfaction in believing that justice is about the redistribution of pain.

o his eyes! says the guard to anyone who will listen. pale as orchid petals. o his arms, strong as the branches of a kapok tree, father of all animals. he admires the prisoner so bad it hurts him to his soul.

this is no conventional story of lover and loved, abuser and abused. it’s just two people fated to be this one unusual thing together, this one unnameable thing, their lovemaking consensual and furious and helpless. and sad, in its own fashion.

they are in a season of their own, two lovers, purposeless as tropical rain.

late at night you can hear them lying together, the low moan of their breath voluptuous in each other’s mouths. their soft cries audible through prison walls.

even outside the prison, where society ends and the jungle begins, you can sometimes hear them, and their hearts pounding fast.

fast as wild animals, and their caresses stronger than the onrushing tide.

flesh against flesh, cresting in the night. sacrificial as all hell against one another’s breast.

George Wallace is writer in residence at the Walt Whitman Birthplace, author of 40 chapbooks, and a fixture of the NYC poetry performance scene. A poet and recording artist, he has played a prominent role in developing poetry projects with national scope – the Woody Guthrie Poets, National Beat Poetry Festival, Poets Building Bridges, and Radio Poet!que blog. His most recent collection is RESURRECTION SONG (Roadside Press, 2023) and he has released five albums of alternative music/poetry to streaming services online. George travels internationally to share his work, and has received numerous honors and awards from major festivals in the US, Europe and South America.