Airport Romance

Last year I travelled to my girlfriend’s native Ukraine. Bizarrely, many of the places we visited were shortly to become focuses of the Ukrainian conflict, from Maidan Nezalezhnosti to the coast of Crimea. On the way, thanks to the bureaucracy of fortress Europe, we were trapped overnight in Paris’s Charles De Gaulle airport. There are certainly worse places to spend an eleven hour layover (each way). Yet the whole experience, and especially the enhanced security procedures at play in Paris, reminded me unpleasantly of my previous visits to City 17. I wrote this poem, published in the latest issue of Saul Bowman’s never ending zine project, after one particularly intimate encounter.

Airport Romance

I’m going to have to pat inside your waistband.
I’m going to have to pat up and down your arms and legs
with the outside of my hands.
It’s no good, you’re going to have to step through once again.
You’re going to have to go through in one movement,
not stop in the middle like you did before.
You’re going to have to come over here, my friend.

I’m going to have to touch you in a way you will never forget.
You’re going to have to show me Paris from the inside out.
I’m going to have to love every minute of it.
We’re going to have to shower once we’re done,
and comb each other’s moustaches.
Yours is going to have to be the colour of caramel,
mine is going to have to go, or people will think we are brothers.

I’m going to have to hold you and keep holding you till we’re little old men.
You’re going to have to die in my arms tonight.
The earth is going to have to slow and cool,
the stars put out their lights,
our blinding cataract.
I’m going to have to let you go.
I’m going to have,
I’m going to.
I’m going,
I’m going,
I’m gone.