A Love Song

A prose interpretation of T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song

of J. Alfred Prufrock”

Let me take you out when the night is stretched like black paper over abandoned windows. Let’s go to a bar where you can feel the crunch of peanut shells under your feet. It's possible that the people we see are not going home alone tonight. Don't ask me “what is it?” Let's just go and make our visits.

Even if we wind up stuck in the front room with the old women who look at us like we're deranged. I'll hold your hand and pull you through, and we'll pretend they are consoling us with their wisdom and grief.

The air outside is a cat that walks around on soft paws, (with fur that’s rotten from months of sleeping outside). You can smell it wherever you go, but still it thrills you when you see it leap!

Don't worry, my love. We've got time. We can waste the evening because there will be time for us to do the things that we have to do… tomorrow. Tomorrow, there will be time to make so many mistakes and then make them all over again. We’ll forgive each other and stop to eat fried dumplings (I might even eat two.)

Let the old women talk. Their voices are useless and low.

When I walk ahead of you down the stairs, you can see that I'm losing my hair. I don't mind. Because when I turn around, you fall into me. And your arms are long.

Let's take a chance? Let's dare to make tonight ours. I want to stomp my foot into the street and watch the city quiver.

I had a chance to do this once, but I didn't. I stood still. When I filled a teaspoon, I made sure I didn’t spill a drop. I was careful. Let's not be that way. Let's be naked. Let's allow the sugar to spill. Let’s undress not just because it makes sex easy. Let's be naked because that's the way we were born.

I was at the university. I let them size me up (and down). I know what it feels like to have the smokey setting sun stare at you. You are starting what I stopped long ago. Let me squeeze your hand. Let me tell you what no one told me. Or if they told me, I wasn't listening. Because they had me on a table. They pinned me to the desk.

I wrote beautiful long hand. A way of writing that is strange to you. Because you can delete. You can change your sentences in seconds.

So do it. Cut it up and cut it out. Do something new. Write something with modern letters. You don't have to be stuck with what you said in the past. You can be free. Kick them in the eyes. Don't let them look at you like critics. Don’t even get on the examination table. Run. Fly. Breathe. Death is only dangerous when you resign. Don’t quit. Never say “goodnight” and stumble into sleep. Stay awake!

These places where I want to take you, I've been to these places. I went there at the end of my work day. I smoked. I don't know if I deserve to be anything but the blind crab at the bottom of the ocean. I have a tough time with change. You know that. You've seen that from me. I am the sideways scampering crab. I walk sideways to go straight.

In the morning we can go home and stretch ourselves like shadows on the floor. From our fingertips to our toes, we can become a prime number! Two ones make 11! You laugh. At me? With me? Who cares? We’re naked. Let’s get splinters and lick our wounds.

Before I met you, I heard the voices of women who tried to tell me that I should turn this way or roll that way or sleep less like a stumbling truck. I've had my opportunity to celebrate and mourn. I don't know what I'm doing. I can't predict the future. I know that when we sit in that corner booth near the jukebox and you drink your dark beer, I feel less tragic. I stop staring at the dagger, and I actually enjoy the soft sound of your lips curling to a smile.

I don't know if it's worth it. I don't know if this love affair of ours is useless. I mean there were past voices. Some of them have pulled knives out of their boots and cut the ropes. I can feel myself floating loose through the universe because those people who were once harbors are now storms.

Is that all it takes? Past voices from the past telling me that I'm a sinner? I won't lie. The voices still rattle around inside my brain. When I am not sitting next to you in the Uber or on the bench by the side of the lake, I do hear them. Because what if they are right? What if they saw the shame and said “it’s wrong. This is all wrong.”

They would lie beside me and eventually get up, walking into the kitchen with a blanket and the white glow of a snow storm. They said to the sparkling night, “that’s not what I meant.” And they would turn with tears, and I could feel the radiator’s trembling pipes. Despite their revelations, I couldn’t stop my mouth from objecting. My poetry withers with their disappointment.

They left. They all left.

My voice was a light that threw the still images of my mind to the wall that always faced the bright eyes and the fine hairs of the arms that hugged the knees and preferred making love to the closing door than to me.

I spoke. I argued. They turned away from the window and said so quietly, “That’s not what I meant. That’s not what I meant, at all.”

I live with the truth that I am sad. I see the smiles and costumes of the happiest princes. I envy their choices. I have no choices left. My head slips. I regret my arms and legs. I am a fool. A dropout. I am double your age. I do my job usefully, but you are a candle. We have light because you burn. My light went out years ago. I fumble in my dark.

I am at a loss over my hair. It escapes and leaves behind old skin. It tilts my scales and makes the creases in my face. You can get lost in my wrinkles. I bought a new soap and ordered a treatment for my expanding scalp. My belt has reached the last notch. Should I cut a new hole?

I can walk to the water and sit on the bench like any old man, watching for the young ladies. They are bent over with laughs. You could be one of them, but these women don’t see me. And they won’t. If you were here, decorated with friends, you wouldn’t see me either.

Later, we can be drunk and asleep on the floor of your apartment, but soon the city’s yawning will wake us. When you blink at me, I am sure you will wonder…how did he get so old without me? That’s a quiet question. Just a fleeting song between mermaids. They sing. They sing. The deaf waters rise to meet me.

The lovely fingers grab for my crooked frown

Till human voices wake me and I drown.