The Breath I Breathe

I am tired of writing about love and being loved,
I have seen it all and yet, I keep trying;
My heart never learned and now neither does the brain –
It is a limitless rigmarole of lying!

Maybe I confuse love with acceptance:
Seeing myself as Perfect, in the eyes of a lover;
But, eventually, I see myself as lacking
Remorse is what I eventually discover.

Ironic sure that the last who loved me
When I was young, now wants someone younger;
Ironic more that he who says loves me now,
Professed cluelessly, quite the same hunger.

Confessions and cheatings have torn my soul apart,
So much so that I have no soul left to bare;
I truly wish I had no use for this miserable heart:
All it has conferred on me is dead-ended despair.

Somewhere delving deeper than heart sinew,
I must have found some self worth, some strength;
But all love does is push it right back in
And holds me up to ridicule and judgement.

Words, when spoken by those I love, shatter
Good, vain preconceptions I have fostered of me;
So I pick and dissect all those that matter
Yet relegate each to just horned-up sexuality.

I really thought I had pushed love out of my system,
Look to the mirror for that is what they all see!
But time makes me commit the same mistake over
And think that love finally wanted the heart in me.

If you want the heart it lies in a body just as mine
And is this not love to love both just the same
My heart has grown older with my body over time
And both still respond to the very same name.

But I am tired of writing about being unloved,
I have seen it all and yet I keep trying,
And I know now that love will not stop
Until the breath I breathe before dying.

The Fan’s Woe

The night has lain down, once more, on my tiny bed;
The silence is broken, by a fan overhead;
Darkness is lit, by flutterings of windowed light;
Images from the day still burn into my sight.
Your hands on my body still leave tendrils of fire;
Yet it was never just a matter of desire –
There was that bittersweet yearning I thought had gone:
Something that had no hope of being reborn.
I surmised wisdom made sure it was left behind –
A few lessons, growing older had taught the mind;
But here it lies, near night, yearning for touch again;
No matter that it comes with the sure price of pain.

The fan creaks, speaking, it tells me, it knows it all,
It has been technical witness to each shortfall.
It blusters the air doing its job as always,
It has seen all that leaves and felt who stays.
So now it addresses me, like a parent dear,
While the darkness addresses all of my fear.
There is not very much to say or do but write;
Maybe this is how I regain clarity of sight.
My eyes droop and I think of his bright, tawny stare,
His head bent over my body, his tousled hair,
My fingers in it, as he tastes a part of me,
Which has been savoured by, oh, so many,
And, I must say, if pain is the sole attraction,
This just goes to speak of my sad heart’s detraction,
And Loneliness that never, truly, left my bed,
Unless you include the groaning fan overhead.

The Circus Clown

Making the same mistake over again,
Leaves me hardly any room to complain.
Admitted that I have wounds to relieve,
Self worth that never fails to deceive,
A hope that never seems to fall to defeat,
Or opposed needs that could ever meet
The passion, that raises an ironic head,
While intelligence leaves its bed.

I fall for a sweet word mumbled in dry tones,
Via uncaring lips or vacuous telephones;
I fall for a kind look and lovely hair,
I forget the rendering and the despair.

I fall to rise again like a circus clown
I just can’t seem to learn to stay down.
I fall.

It is like a roller coaster ride:
So filled with thrills I cannot deride.

Words are so beautifully spoken
I hear them despite them being broken.
But, though I’m tired of falling, I see it clear:
My fears, though numb, are almost dear,
As if that hope I had, now, has clawed deep
And being awakened shall never sleep.

In mistakes then, it shall seek a solace,
That never stays in one time or one place.
So on I blunder, and get held by warm lies,
And truth shall fail, no matter how it tries
To make sense of the world that is now mine,
That knows joy for rare, brief seconds of time.