12.7.25 Saturday

 I think it is safe to say

that if love dies of neglect

if love cannot endure

a fading light

then our arrangement 

was not love

my longing heart

my teary eyes 

cannot see

how to build a bridge

to separate us for good

or for evil

Holiday joy

winter hush

loves embrace

the fleeting bliss of sex

all gone

nothing left but memory

the burden of knowledge

you saddled me with

you owed it to me

to share the burden 

if not forever

then for better or worse

 it was both

what is hope

for what I don't know

the one thing i could cling to

in the metaphorical storm

that washes away all meaning

is what you left 

you wont come back

there is no reason 

I have no expectations 

and nothing to offer

Delusion is left

And nightmares

occasionally a video 

That make me smile

for lost dreams 

https://youtu.be/ukfNXFgUEiU?si=uAlOFw-4bz54JPSU

A real poem: Original Fire

Leave the dishes.

Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.

Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.

Throwms the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.

Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.

Don't even sew on a button.

Let the wind have its way, then the earth

that invades as dust and then the dead

foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.

Talk to them. 

Tell them they are welcome.

Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles

or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry

who uses whose toothbrush or if anything

matches, at all.

Except one word to another.

Or a thought.

Pursue the authentic-decide first

what is authentic, then go after it with all your heart.

Your heart, that place you don't even think of cleaning out.

That closet stuffed with savage mementos.

Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner again. 

Don't answer the telephone, ever,

or weep over anything at all that breaks.

Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons

in the refrigerator. 

Accept new forms of life

and talk to the dead who drift in though the screened windows,  who collect patiently on the tops of food jars and books.

Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything

except what destroys the insulation between yourself and your experience

or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters this ruse you call necessity. 

~Louise Erdrich, Original Fire