Have you ever been madly in love?

The old man broke my reverie.

On the long faded green bench white with bird droppings
he was peering at me through his silver grey beard
looking oddly out of place in that college squire park
where only the dreamers at the prime of youth
would sit between classes to exchange love notes
and steal a kiss when the passion couldn't be reined in.

Have you ever been madly in love? he repeated,
and then as if growing impatient by my silence
mumbled, pausing between words,
like they stung him like thorns
it extracts a price been paying all my life
living with a void no other woman could fill
a commitment that breeds only pain
yet makes me insanely boastful
of being madly in love.

It was recess hour and the benches were being filled up.

How many, I wondered, would still hold hands
when the classes are over.

Chain smoking sadness, slapped by time.
Winter doesn't freeze the pain.
There was one thing that
Mom wanted more than
anything else in the world:
It was to have a
picture of her
seven kids all together,
in one place,
at one time.
There was an age
difference of
23 years between the
youngest to the oldest,
and 1000 miles separating us.

In December of 1987
two weeks before Christmas,
I held a picture of
the seven of us all together.
I put it in the
right front pocket of
her navy blue blazer.
After the funeral,
we buried her with it.

He laid there seizing in pain
Because of an addiction
Gone wrong.

You could have said,
How can we help you get better?
You could have said,
We are family and
We are here for you.

Yet you said nothing.
You just laughed at his pain.
You ridiculed him as if
His pain was not worth
Your attention.

Those marble plaques in the cemetery
hold no dead beneath them
yet in the rising mists of winter evenings
when night like loose dark pebbles
fall from the sky
can be heard hooves of trotting horses
from the rows of cold white stones
and on nights favored by moon
is visible cavalry in scarlet serge
with pith helmets and carbine rifles
piercing the terror paused wind
with cries of vengeance
mirthful in washing blood with blood
on the fields of Cawnpore
dissolving into marble white stones
steeped in the peace of moonlight.

The free ones and the ones who have fates are all mixed together
Tired happy and excited or

Wry, humble, eager.


Paul Anthony Hutchinson
www.paulanthonyhutchinson.com
copyright Paul Anthony Hutchinson

If I'm a human, I can make mistakes,
Learning from them makes me what I am,
Since eons, experience has been the best teacher,
I don't regret my choices, even if it was a big, big mistake,
It did seem correct then,
Past can't be changed but the future, it's all mine,
My mistakes made me better,
Be grateful, be happy,
Cherish what you did,
Enjoy what you do,
Ultimately you'll be in love with what you have.

~ S.G