After awhile they all become amalgam
A blur of possibilities, never becoming
The same emotions, hopes, obsessions
The same disappointment
Tying it all together at the end.
You were also a disappointment
With a different luster
The only exception
That never blurred.
Twenty years of fidelity
And Penelope is rewarded
With a return.
Twenty years is too long
But I have counted
Knowing to expect nothing.
Tag: unrequited love
secret
You are the soft song I sing to myself
Deep in the night when there is nothing else
A wisp of a promise left unfulfilled
Something I shattered before we could build
Now a memory that shall fade in time
Lost forever, survived only by rhyme
Though thinking else is the dream of a fool
I know your heart was never mine to rule
But sometimes a sweet dream is all we have
So I'll savor this song, my darling lad
doomed
I will think of you in the deep quiet of the night
I will think of you in the ferocity of the storm
On the bright summer days
Through enduring drought
When the ice storms of winter
Bend the trees to the ground
I will think of you through every plague
Through frogs and swarms and blood
And through more modern apocalypses
I will think of you, I will think of you
I will think of you through laughter, tears
While huddled facing deep set fears
When I find myself in another's arms
When buried beneath my cairn
The past is past - I will never tell you
But I will never not think of you.
Sanskrit
96 words for love
Could you imagine?
Being able to understand
with immediacy
if someone is describing
their affection for sweets
or a sweetheart?
To understand if it is general
or familial
or devotional
or sexual?
How much more meaning
if I knew the exact word
to describe this thing
this mad, eternal longing
devotion beyond devotion’s due
so difficult to express
it is like how the ocean
pulls to the moon
or the flower
faces the sun
It is as neverending
and vast
as the outward flung stars
spreading across the universe
hurtling into the emptiness
of beyond.
My only hope is entropy.
No Regrets
that idealized love
which fuels us
(all of us
in the secret places of our hearts
that we do not admit)
exists
But it is:
not always returned;
not always understood;
not always perfect;
not immune to the ravages
of the mortal coil.
Here is a miracle:
that all of the generations existed
that your mother met your father
and through happenstance
whether sorrowful or beautiful
you existed.
that through all the ages, wars, and devastations
my line of ancestors persevered
and led to me.
that somehow, despite the breadth and width and depth
of the whole of the world
we met.
through some small twist of fate
we might not have been
and yet we are.
Existing to meet,
meeting itself –
a miracle.
And yet
love returned is rare.
Yes, it’s not fair.
But we all know the rules of the game
and the rewards
and the worth behind the risk.
mehryment 