Jezebel- a poem about a weird punker chick I dated in 1989

 This is me carving a line in the Nude Bowl, in the spring of 1990, a few months after writing this poem.  The Nude Bowl is an abandoned swimming pool out in the middle of the desert, legendary in the BMX and skateboard worlds, in the Palm Springs area.  It's a relic from a 1970's era nudist colony.  I have very few pics of myself from that era, so this will have to do.  Video still from The Ultimate Weekend, my 1990 BMX video.

In late 1989, I dated this weird punker chick who used to hang out at the Huntington Beach Pier on the weekends, where a handful of us BMX freestylers would hang out and session.  It wasn't a serious relationship, I think she dated me mostly for the food, I took her out to Denny's almost every night.  

She was really weird, and told us a different name nearly every time we saw her, for the first several weeks she started hanging out.  We took to calling her Jezebel, I'm not sure why.  We listened to The Cure a lot while hanging out, and she liked to watch horror flicks.  The one thing I will say about her, this weird punker chick had an amazing rapport with animals.  She had a rat that would drink off of her (or my) tongue.  The thing that really freaked me out, though, is that she would cuddle with my roommate's 25 pound, mean as hell cat.  I never even petted the cat, in two years of living in that apartment.  I still managed to get bit by it once.  But, within five minutes of walking in the living room, Silus the furry, mean, basketball of a cat was on his back, in her lap, and she was rubbing its belly.  My roommate, who owned the cat, could rub its belly maybe once a month, without getting bit.  So she was a really weird, kind of interesting, very crazy punker chick.  But she had an incredible way with animals.  Near the end of of our short relationship, I wrote this poem.  I was probably kind of drunk, I can't remember.  I wanted to break it up, but was kind of worried since she was kind of suicidal at times.  I wrote this poem when I was thinking about how to break up with her.

Looking back, I think this is the oldest poem of mine that has survived, unless someone finds a copy of my first poetry zine, We're on the same Mental Plane... and it's Crashing.  This poem was in that zine, which I published in 1992.  But there were poems in it going back to 1988, when I really started writing a lot of poetry.  Obviously, it's not a great poem, but since I memorized this one, I still had it, when I lost nearly all of the 400-500 poems I've written, in a move in 2008.  In my head, the way I would read it, the rhythm of this poem goes to the tune of the song, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."  Yeah, not the best relationship when that's the song that comes to mind while thinking about it.  

Jezebel

The words that I want, well they just aren't around

And I can't look into your eyes

What we once felt, I don't see anymore

Like a ship when the fog fills the skies

The moments they come, and the moments they go

But the right moment just won't come 'round

I can't go on feeling just how I do, and I can't risk leaving you down

You're all that I wanted, before I knew what I had

And without you I'd never have known it

You captured what little love I had inside, even though I may not have shown it

But here we are now, in the dark and the gray, two rowboats adrift in the mist

And maybe our paths, they will cross once again, if not this world than in the next

-The White Bear

I just wrote a big post with thoughts about poems, and writing poetry, on my Substack.  Check it out:

Steve Emig The White Bear's Substack