Not All For Love: A Book of Poetry Page 3
of us
just how our love
supplies itself a
longingly,
garrulously
full fault.
In love,
we become
so completely cut off
from the real world
that it becomes suspect
to even consider there
might be such a thing
as a real world in the first place.
In love,
we indulge in
a fantasy of ourselves as
something other than
what we are, as convinced
as we are to believe in
the ideal, the sacred, the divine.
In love,
we find ourselves
enslaved to our feelings,
trapped in a vortex of emotions,
a storm of self-righteousness
from which there can be no escape.
Love,
then, is a weapon we
choose to use against ourselves.
Love,
then, becomes a
strike against decency.
Love,
then, announces itself
without fanfare, without calling
attention to itself.
Love,
then, is content
in its subdued state of being,
secure as it is in its final victory,
careful not to practice its righteousness
in front of others to be seen by them,
even as it puts itself on display
for all the world to see.
Love,
then, is itself
a contradiction,
an enigma,
across light-years
searching for itself.
13.
In circles
we run ourselves
ragged, raw,
in pursuit of a feeling,
never more sure of
ourselves than when
we are in pursuit of a feeling.
We all know the
intoxication, the way
our thoughts slur into one another
and the way a
warm haze obscures
our judgement like a
thick smog settling
over a river’s valley on a
frigid winter’s morning.
We willingly surrender
ourselves, our selves to
this feeling, this drunken feeling,
as if to make ourselves whole with it,
insanely, paradoxically
fronting itself an
fallacious and
condescending attitude.
In surrender
there is joy,
and in joy
there is loss,
the loss of the self
nothing when held
against the power of the
feeling. Still, like an
addict in search of his next fix,
we convince ourselves
relief lies
around every corner,
behind every turn,
on finding only
death and despair we
look
to the next corner,
to the next turn,
until we are
confronted with the
futility of our own lies.
Recovered, we are
steady, ready to face the
onslaught of an uncaring
world. Recovered, we might
make it through a short while
before we fall in love again.
In love again, we
fall prey to the same
temptations we’d once
worked so hard to overcome,
willingly throwing ourselves
back into the addiction
at first sight of our love.
In passion
there is sustenance
and in pain
there is joy,
and it’s in this sustenance I
look to what may come with
full force of an worried,
excited, distressed feeling
of being with her.
14.
After
having had
the love of my life,
there can be no other
source of love;
all pale in
comparison to
she who would be
the love of my life
and the object of my worship.
Like a poor man cast
off from the rocky shores,
I am adrift, tossed about
by waves crashing
against one another, a
salty spray stinging
in my nostrils and
a lurching feeling churning
my insides. But
there are glimpses
of her, here and there,
appearing on the
horizon like an ghostly
visage, haunting
with memories
of our short time
together. Looking
ahead into the
pages of memory, I
come across a
picture of her,
she wearing a sharp
scowl and resting
her hands on her hips,
seeming to loom
into view. It’s a
picture vivid to
pull me from
the present and
make good on the past;
in love, I am
like the tides at night,
heaving itself blindly
at the darkened cliffs,
only the pale moonlight
to cast a sickly glow
on the salty spray. We
have come full circle,
and in love we have
come to be obsessed
with finding our way
home, again. It’s
short, too short,
like a dotted line
reaching for the
horizon but only
reaching halfway
there.
15.
A feeling
called love
must provoke the
creation of its own
anti-feeling
called anti-love.
An hideous thing,
this anti-love,
an blackened cloud
gathering strength
over the horizon,
threatening to
unleash itself
at any moment.
Endemic to the
world we live in,
a cruel idea we
subject ourselves to
in the hopes of
meticulous, meritorious
sentiment becoming
visited upon us all.
As I wonder
on the love we’ve shared,
for the brief time
we’ve shared our love,
the thought occurs to me,
sneaking from a
dark crevasse someplace
in the back of my mind,
leaking forward like
a slick of oil along a
calm water’s surface.
This has become my shame;
falling in love with
the woman of my dreams
only to fall out of love with
her, step-for-step, each
sumptuous blue flame
obediently regretful,
impulsively amused.
To the pages of memory I have
committed her, neither
as she is nor as she was,
but as I hold her to be,
ideal, imperfect,
but to those same pages
committed as I hold her not to be,
actual, perfect;
it’s a fool’s endeavour.
but a sensation
drawn out over time,
left to fester, to gather
an insidious smell
until you can’t help but act on it.
A feeling is
like love, but not love,
nor a feeling unlike love,
but a fool’s endeavour, and I
wilfully come a fool,
surrendering to the
raw, electrifying surge of
power coursing through my
veins until I can do
anything the feeling
demands of me.
Her name,
the sound of her name
spoken silently is
lyrical, fantastical,
a sacred verse brought to life
by the part of me
choosing surrender to
the notion of our love.
Addendum.
In all this talk
of our love, may we
be forgiven for the
self-indulgence of it all.
If only we could
forgive ourselves!
16.
In once upon a time,
we were as two little
birds sleeping a body-width
apart while perched on a
slim wooden beam. A
love like her, I’ve
never known, will never
know again, couldn’t
have known even as
we were so close.
In becoming unlike we are,
we learn to discard
the self and embrace the
horror, the terror of it all.
But after having
fallen in love
with the woman
of my dreams, no
experience, no
sensation can compare,
all life seeming
dulled, grey. An
love that
reserves for itself
contrarian, abrasive,
hasty amusement,
like the sun’s setting
so early in the day
when winter’s
at its peak.
As time passes,
we become numb
to the pain of our
separation, learning to
imitate like animals
trained by forced repetition.
As time passes,
we are taught to
forget the joy in
surrender to another,
the joy I’ve felt only for her.
As time passes,
we learn, by
act of subversion, to
recall, in the way we can,
the way we used to feel,
our memory framed by the
hindrance of perspective,
trying to think, trying too hard.
Enough, nearly enough,
as memories of her
dirty-blonde hair and her
deep brown eyes and the way
her curvaceous figure
drew my eyes from
across a crowded room all
nearly enough to trick me
into thinking we are
trading surreptitious glances
as we used to, in a secret,
unspoken code only we knew,
her name, her name,
her voice, her voice,
her warmth, her warmth,
a trick I allow the
victory of deception
out of a desperate need
just to be
with her again.
17.
As we
have each other
after a lengthy separation,
it’s like the first
drink of water
after wandering
through the desert.
As we
put our hands on each other,
the softness of her skin
feels so unlike the
coarseness of mine,
at once the haughty,
unabashed blindness
of our love enslaving itself
to what’s surely ahead. It’s
self-absorbed, and I
can’t help but marvel at its
drunken, dreadful
impulsiveness, the way it
obediently regrets the
kind-heartedness of it all.
As we
kiss, the marvel fades,
replaced by an wholesome
satisfaction, an deeply
spiritual bliss.
As we
make love,
the feeling of being
immersed in each other’s
bodies bleeds into the
feeling of being as one,
as two people in a single
body, but for only a moment,
in exactly the time it takes
for us to claim our shared
climax, our minds blanking
as we blend into one another
and have our