Love Poem 21
Boy oh boy,
if I had a dollar for how many time in my life
someone has told me
about how
fulfilling love is
I would probably be a millionaire.
I’ve also heard how
it is something that isn’t like anything else.
It will keep you warm in the coldest winter.
When your belly is empty, love will fill you up.
When you are dying of thirst, love will nourish you.
Love is something that will fill in every
crack and crevice
and it can get you through the most trying of times.
Gibran said something to the effect of
love having no desire but to fulfill itself,
that love has no desire to exist any differently than it does.
I hear that to mean
love is indivisible and beyond duality.
Love is the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle.
Love is the inextinguishable light,
the flame of eternity.
So, like I said,
if I had a dollar for every time I heard about
everything love is supposed to be
I wouldn’t be sitting here hacking away at the typewriter,
I can tell you that much.
However, if I had the proof by way of money I spoke about,
I have to accept that maybe
I am the one who is wrong and
maybe there is something wrong with me and
I am missing or not properly understanding something.
Maybe love IS all the things outlined above and
I just don’t know a goddamn thing
and refuse to submit, instead preferring to
howl at the moon
and
chase my tail
and once I catch ahold, I start chewing and eating and eating
and eating with the intention of
destroying myself
so that one day
my flesh will wear away and
my bones will be dust.
So, hardly a coincidence then that
I am not good at loving
and
I am not good at letting myself be loved
and, often, I would rather
push away anyone and everyone.
What good, after all, can anyone do?
Help me? Heal me?
Make me whole?
Shield me from the killing world?
Give me cold bleakness,
give me a cold beer,
give me a bag of good dope.
Give me the things that
cloud the mind
and
cloud the heart
and all the things that
make me stupid and slow and comfortable.
Do not ask me to see the world clearly and through
open eyes.
I can’t do it.
Everything to me is is nothing.
Everything is void.
Everything is hurtling towards the end.
That light at the end of the tunnel
is a train
and I am tying myself to the tracks.
Burn the money.
Burn the feeling.
Let me lay on the tracks and feel the weight of it all.
