Original digital surreal art: “Stealing Kisses” by: rob kistner © 10/8/24
Author’s Note:
My inspiration for writing “All My Lovin’” was drawn from exploring the record albums of my youth. Also, strangely enough, from a wonderful novel by Peter Heller entitled “The Dog Stars”. It was reinforced by my awoken curiosity, which found me sampling the top 100 hits of 1963, which was the soundtrack for the summer of my 16th year. That landed me solidly on the Beatles. It was the summer of my red ‘62 Chevy, which I traded for my true gem — a ’57 Chevy Bel Air “rag top”. It was my ‘63 Triumph 650 Bonneville motorcycle, my first rock and roll band, and my first “girl” — oh that rush of young love.
Looking back at my early teen years, those years when I was waiting for my life to begin, I flashed on my memories of young love. The intensity of that tender, pure, unrealistic infatuation, could perhaps have happened only then, in those times – in that summer of 1963. Before assasinations, collapsing economies, open social unrest, Viet Nam, before AIDS, COVID-19, rampant drugs, criminal presidents – the year of the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show, the Beach Boys took the world surfing, Annette Funicello playing beach blanket bingo, Ruby promised our day was coming… Chevy ragtops, Triumph Bonnevilles, OpArt, and President Kennedy challenging us to go to the moon. This was a time, maybe the last time, when teens were still blissfully innocent.
I don’t know why that feels true. Perhaps it’s because we were so naive and so unsure as teens, in that post WWll, white-picket-fence, father-knows-best, american-dream, faux-utopia. We were tentative and waiting, wondering. It’s as if love imagined to be that innocent, needed that much room, that much “open” mental space, that much time, that much emotional “safety”, that much unbridled belief, for it to take root, and to bloom – even if but for a brief moment in time.
The not knowing anything really for certain, but hoping, with aching faith in the possibility of pure true love, was both thrilling and unsettling. It was a love full of passion and devotion, but scary. We were not completely certain how to navigate such an emotion, not really, so we left it alone, tried to let it unfold lightly, terrified we would lose it. And if it did manifest, it felt so big and beautiful, and unbelievable! It was most often short-lived, owing to our immaturity, and the fragile combustibility of the feeling – but what intoxicating joy, such heady exhilaration! Those were the times when the apparitional gossamer wings of all consuming young love did fly to the moon, and carried us helplessly, but willingly, along. Here is my poem, “All My Lovin’”…
Strong slender legs
carry firm eager bodies
perfumed and cologne’d
around and across the dance floor
pulses racing
electrified — entwined — excited
young groping lust
craving
yet hesitant
swept up in innocent bliss
shadowed near the band shell
beyond the glow of incandescence
aching for that kiss
swollen with erotic effervescence
throbbing with the big beat
of scorching rock & roll
or drifting on a cloud
of ethereal romance
fantasizing there might be
a chance
hormones afire
in a maddening dance
smoldering for some
longing for more
confusing for most
a pubescent play
beneath a high starry sky
sparking with carnal fantasies
humid as our urgent embraces
hot as our stolen kisses
as forever as our promised love
in that distant
teenage midnight sizzle
stealing kisses
in the drizzle
praying our fragile feelings
our imagined love
would not falter
nor fizzle
such glorious terror…
…sweet ghosts of my youth
haunt from long ago
— The album in 1963 (American release) —
— Me in 1963 —
— My Summer of 1963 —
— My car in 1963 —
*
rob kistner © 2024
More poetry at: dVerse
~ hit parade of 1963 — my first summer of love ~