Category: Love

When We Meet in Heaven, Dad

I picture it: a convention –
where like minds congregate,
learn from one another,
aspire to betterment

A conference of healing,
dedicated to those newly
passing on, like limbo,
only educational.

Imagine my surprise, then
should you be there, Dad –
you who’ve never before
attended my performances

I’ll attempt to stifle the
discomfort, suppress doubt,
cherish the moment,
but I know you too well

will catch the gist of
your duplicity, easily
recognizing self-serving
motivations, feel the rage –

intact despite the body’s demise –
intent on tracking you down
one final confrontation
to elaborate on the deplorablity

of your manipulative ways,
your brick-wall tactics,
the cruelty of absenting
yourself from a child’s needs

would check the registry –
surely they have a registry
in Heaven – will not find
your name listed there

In an aha moment, think
to find you under an alias –
I’d be right – stand at the door
of your chamber, inflated

righteousness ready to
denounce you for eternity,
feel the strike of bolt-like
revelation, decades of wrath

disintegrating into sorrow,
sudden clarity washing over me,
as you open the door, hesitant
to receive me, I’ll declare:

“Dad, it’s okay – I accept you
just the way you are;  I just
don’t want any more
distance between us!”

(Image: dorotheacarney.com)

Love Matters

Ex-lovers,
like criminals
line up –
a visceral backdrop

Another vies
to take their place,
a critical eye
and no-nonsense
disposition

questions motivations
highlights the faults
in righteous accusations,
bends the arrow of blame
reassigning guilt

the jilted,
now pathetic,
craves absolution,
starves for appreciation

awakens to
sickening revelation
that sex alone
cannot sustain
relationship

understands
too late
the value
in personal
accountability.

(Image: www.psychologicalscience.org)

 

Sanctity

He possessed a certain divinity,
a soft-spoken modesty she read
as safe harbour, fell for maiden-like
innocence, her blessed compliance.

Married in the sacred way, carnal
mounting accentuating a tailored
love – husband and wife exploring,
celebrating glorious submission

until joy plummeted – impossible
to duplicate infatuation in a void –
they grasped at objects, mystery –
remodeled, relocated, searched,

constructed a delicate balance –
contrived happiness, passionless,
spontaneous and fearful, rawness
of exposed souls clinging together

saw deliverance in the perfection
of celebrity, worshiped at the feet
of media icons, like fools pandering
to a naked Emperor, no amount of

polish could contain the anxiousness
of their precariousness; quietly he
undressed another, fiery girl, while
surprised onlookers, sensitive, yet

unwilling to intervene – the discernible
darkness seeping through cracks of a
once golden haze – closed their doors to
the holy union now veering off course,

shielded themselves from bludgeoning
nostalgia, the anguished cries of vows
slaughtered bleeding onto sidewalks,
as if pain bore tentacles, spidery limbs

able to infiltrate the secrets of their
own carefully compartmentalized
partnerships, disrupt the grind and
lay bare the godless infidelities within.

(Image: nypost.com)

Midsummer Night’s Trap

I am no Titania,
whose mind poisoned
by Puck’s subterfuge,
finds your asinine
nature alluring.

You once slaughtered
all rational instincts,
beheaded my sensibility,
paraded my gored heart
like a trophy oozing blood

Thought to seduce me
anew, so confidant in
your primal charms,
my carnal libido, but no
flowery fog deludes me

you are not a guileless
Bottom, but an incubus
maliciously motivated,
a destroyer of souls,
conquest a side sport…

So willingly we entered
that midnight garden
of lust – me, innocent
as Helena, you a serpent
in the plot, more twisted

than Puck’s foiled plan;
I fear I have not removed
myself far enough from
that enchanted dystopia,
am grasping to reach

something stable, sane…
a solid security that defies
magical notions, grounds
me in respectability, a return
to a banality that precludes you.

(Image:  classicmoviestills.com)

 

 

 

Wayward Daughter

Back and forth I travel searching
for her – retrace every bend, curve,
detour – back to the water, the sand,
the beach where I lost her; haunted by

those velvet brown eyes – bedroom eyes,
they told her, men with greedy loins,
calculating – I lost her to the lure of
alcohol, to the pounding beat of drums,

in those smoky corners so far removed
from the purity of her dreams….
it’s been an arduous journey, some days
so lost in the daze of forgetting; I cycle

back, memories of manhood exposed,
egos craving stroking, how she learned
what men wanted, learned to numb
the disappointment with fast-talk

and all-nighters, suppressed tears,
discovered that words hold no promise,
and water is deep, and going within
is a dark, foreboding place, and worth

is shrouded by the shame of discovering
that even the father she adored was not
as she’d thought, and that this primal
urge she felt for mating was a trap

designed to eradicate her beauty, not
enhance it…I need to find her, hold
her afloat in sacred waters, help her feel
the healing light of a thousand women’s

hearts all bleeding as one, all warped
by the same convoluted messages
about womanhood – that lust is sinful
and copulation a man’s domain, and

that in order to be espoused she must
forego her own nature, tame the wild,
settle for loss of control…but as much
as I travel these lonely roads, I cannot

find her, the traces of her innocence
washed away by the tides, lines now
on my aged face…if you see her, please
hold her close, protect her from beasts,

hold her until the beauty of her being
is a solid knowing, and the shame has
been vanquished; and that being a vessel
for man’s release is not her only purpose.

 

 

Distance

Even in togetherness there is distance.

I am alone.

A central figure, distracted,
aiming for contact  –
unable to eviscerate control –
repeatedly producing a singular confusion.

Define success…
Is it the one on top,
the know-it-all,
or are these the mechanisms
of estrangement?

I am unable to discern –
stability never more than a dalliance.

The pavement ahead whispers
promises of a sense of belonging,
can I tolerate the quest?

Unfulfilled, I am protective,
fear off-shoots of depression,
shield tender inner places…

bring on change, there are others
watching, looking to me
as an example.

I can do it, on their behalf.

Never alone.

Always distances to cross.

 

 

A Sister’s Sin

Patience does not apply
in a family lacking ease,
nor is loyalty gifted…

my sister – a fiery red
corvette fuelled by hate
would slaughter kin

lived for the fight,
gleaned energy from
sinful behaviours

despite hard-work,
tasted power in attracting
meat – a fleshy cow –

processed sweethearts
with abandonment,
hardly caring, despised

public scrutiny – her world
a miniscule burlesque show
fluttering raw flesh inviting

scavengers – appeased out of
necessity – she shopped crowds,
possessed a light that shouted:

“Open for business” – dared
not endure loneliness, desperate
to annihilate the past –

her heart, a massive-winged
avenger, pummelled by
the memories of a brother

her twin – torn from her
by a deserting father – left
dying like an unwanted pest

an agonizing plummet
into an unendurable darkness
from which she sought any

infiltration, yearning to
pierce, to relieve, the musty
hold of her ground-up reality:

no virtue in patience,
no prize in loyalty
each woman for herself

(Image: insanityismyreality.deviantart.com)

Unrequited

Met in high school, when popularity
equated to lovability, awkwardness
a given – tender hearts sailing a course,
letting love transport them – she was
his pride and joy, he her universe…

stumbled over declarations, hearts
beating an unsteady noise – he shone
in athletics, she called herself a loner;
confessed their love – infatuation filled
with promise – fateful idealists, in time

would be crushed – blinded by beauty,
they floated past her broken pieces on
wings of borrowed confidence: vows
of worldly treasures he offered her,
couldn’t see her limitations, should

have known her particular brand of
crazy would reject him, resistant as
she was to intimacy’s openings; he
would have stood by her, had planned
their future – didn’t know they were

staging a melodrama, slapping hope,
the memories he was sure they were
building, believed in, already growing
cold behind the curtains of her moody
eyes – failure becoming her reality…

madness took her in the end, his light
too vibrant for her darkness; wrenched
herself from his embrace – a violence
that left him reeling, shuddering in its
aftermath – still dreams of her, wonders

how he failed her, looks for her spirit
in the eyes of others, a trail of lovers,
one as unsatisfactory as the next, heart
never completely mended… and, she
settled for a man who could not love,

found safety in emotional distance,
told herself this the was the best that
she deserved, still dreams of him
while lying in her barren marital bed,
her oblivious husband beside her.

(Image:  www.dailytelegraph.com.au)

 

 

Love In Aisle Nine

Lust ignores warning signals,
fancies itself a savvy consumer,
commits minor infractions with
confidence, sidestepping anxiety.

Loneliness – near-sighted – shops
without discernment, fails to
recognize that all life is transient,
and patience is the key to harmony.

Love – the main attraction – is not
a lone chauffeur, a self-serving
commander, feeding off helplessly
disabled, regressing into insanity;

nor is it initiated by determination,
a product of drive – brokenness
barreling through hurt’s congestion,
misinterpreting openings; the path

to intimacy requires compliance,
obeys service, calms egos, a slow
non-consumer based passage: no
bargains in the commitment dept.

(Image: imagineinfinitycoaching.wordpress.com)

Haunting Irony

You come to me in the Dreamtime
slipping between the veil of what is
and what shall never be, stirring my
restlessness, a bittersweet reminder
of love once cherished, yet shunned.

You are a ghost shattering illusions
of sleep, thrusting me into lucidity,
regrets real – I want to hold you to me
for eternity, devoured by the shame of
what I did to you – relentless sorrow…

Always, you are steadfast, forgiving,
offering up your unshakeable love,
melting me with the depth of your
tenderness, your patient smile, those
ocean blue eyes – you redeem me

Then day comes, and pulls me from
your embrace, and promises fade,
but the dream lingers, leaves me
dissatisfied, a punishing reminder
that I let you go to save us from pain.

(Image: blogsleepingsimple.com)