I love you dearly
  but can't promise
   to permanently stay:
   freedom I need passionately

   love shouldn't be
   the owning and clinging:
   my all I can't give away
   that would be my very dying-

   I will plead sincerely
   that you shouldn't love me
   look away, keep your heart
   to yourself-- lest you suffer endlessly!

The old self within me
is insistent and demanding:
it sets my every boundary
and dictates my way of living-

I've struggled for so long
its obstinacy knows no easing
agendas and rules it sets tightly
from its grasp there's no freeing

only in my last days of dying
will I find its ceasing and demising

Words-- they bruise
dissect and cut
but they also teach, weep
heal and direct the heart

to unknown new heights
of feeling and understanding
every person is defined
by the words they are employing

in their daily communicating
interacting, their story-telling
what will ultimately rule the world
is finding the right and virtuous wording

Thinking
   and feeling
   neither is
a simple thing-
   each has
its own layers
  the unfathomable labyrinth
words are lost
  and confused
   in translation

  don't sell me
  AI or any technology
  they can't feel anything
  they are a nuisance-
  so annoying!

  First and last
  we're each
  a human being
  though lost
  in the labyrinth
  we'll not cease
  in our thinking
feeling and doing

Languor
but not melancholy
as in life, love, relationships
themes of music and poetry

all that is
has no permanency
each is a subject
of ephemerality

it's inescapable
weltschmerz so common
the same words and acts
the monotony--unbroken

not despair, not melancholy-
the undertone and mood of languor:
the fading, the paling, the lustre-lacking
the slipping away, the joy and beauty no more

Don't coax or bribe me
many did try before
though little I have
I need nothing more-

a tiny farm far from the city I own
in a place to others unknown
my wife and kids shout for joy at harvest times
after last season's seeds we had diligently sown

My secret hiding-place
I told no one
hid from my peers
there I did run

when I was chided
at home for being lazy
dad and mum were anxious
lest I'd not make it to uni-

tears I shed sitting
by a silent stream
nursing my wound
the image crept into my dream

ever since even
as I'm an old man now
dad and mum are long gone
I've thought of them anyhow

as past memories flash back-
if only I hadn't caused them pain
( hard I did work, a degree I did obtain
but they had departed then)-

as I sit under the same oak tree
in this unknown woodland
no words of comfort can I find
my parents' hearts now I truly understand