The Poetry, Essays and Intimate Journals of Larry L. Dill
The Smell of Love
Sometimes I think that
what love comes down to
is smells—
how you feel about someone
when all the deodorant and perfume
is washed away by sweat or time
and you are left with the fact
that this person smells this way—
top to bottom
and every place in between.
Not whether you can share
A bedroom or not
But if you can coexist
With the same bathroom.
Not romantic.
Sorry.
But think about it.
The eye is easily deluded.
Ears even more so.
Taste can be disguised.
Touch sometimes lies.
But the nose seeks truth always
and abides with it.
“It’s as plain,” they say,
“As the nose on your face.”
The old truth seeker.
Ignore him at your peril.
--Hyde Park Bar and Grill
March 23, 1986
I think about Delores’ in Santa Fe—
I think of Mexican-style McDonalds
where you can get green chiles on your hamburger
for twenty-five cents extra.
It’s a plastic place but it is warm plastic.
That’s the thing about the Mexicans:
they can even make plastic warm.
Or put it another way:
it’s nice to be waited on
by someone who looks at you
when you order.
--Café du Jour
March 28, 1988
Once he had wanted to be a novelist but his thoughts were too fragmented.
Every time he tried to develop the plot for a novel, he wound up with
a group of rundown images: a face, a hand, an isolated moment, a frozen
image—like a bum at the dumpster hanging over the side, feet off the
ground as he rummaged; and this one image embodying the dilemma of
our time. But how could you write a novel about a bum hanging half-in
and half-out of a dumpster? You couldn’t, but you could write a poem
about it. And perhaps if he wrote poems about each and every one of
these fragments, he could one day combine them and have, if not a novel,
at least the beginning of order. It seemed a worthwhile aim. So he
became a poet and he began the work of meticulously recording his fragmented
world, Years later, having achieved some success, he concluded
that his decision had been a sound one, particularly when he passed the
State Hospital with its array of fragmented souls peering through the
wire fence. “Failed novelists,” he’d murmur to himself and drive on.
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copyright 2007 by Larry L. Dill