'Hotel rooms constitute a separate moral universe.' <br />-Tom Stoppard <br /> <br />A bed, a telephone, the cord <br />to the world <br />beyond the womb . . . <br />Here lovers meet, have met, <br />will meet again behind different faces <br />while the icy picures <br />look on, <br />seeing nothing. <br /> <br />Hotel rooms see nothing. <br /> <br />Business transacted, <br />prostitutes killed, <br />marriages silently shaken; <br />what happens here <br />is off the record; <br />there is no record <br />when the sheets <br />are changed <br />every night <br />for other guests. <br /> <br />& you my darling <br />my lover, my reader, <br />ultimately <br />myself, <br />why are you hungering so, <br />why are you opening <br />abysses in yourself <br />before you rush off <br />to the next appointment? <br /> <br />Eternity is just <br />a hotel room- <br />deluxe or seedy <br />as the fates allow, <br />lonely as the loneliest <br />one-night stand, <br />& with no telephone. <br /> <br />Or is it the body? <br />Is the body the hotel room after all? <br />O let us inhabit it amply, crying <br />& screaming & embracing <br />before we <br /> <br />check out.<br /><br />Erica Jong<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/hotel-rooms/
