Letting Go

My past is haunted with your memory,
it quakes when I put myself out there
to meet someone new,
someone who I hope isn’t like you

It’s not that you’re bad
or inexcusably uncouth,
it’s that you were everything
I wanted until
I learned the truth

The truth is that I’ve lived in
my imagination since I was
small
wishing for a girl to give my life
meaning by loving the
shy little boy too scared
to share his feelings

I envisioned a hippy girl with a
penchant for reclusiveness,
one whose wild spirit
saved me from
uselessness

I was a wandering poet with no direction in life
A floater in existence looking for his wife
I wanted a soulmate to fill this empty void
A romance whose purity couldn’t be destroyed

I yearned for a damsel in a sunflower dress
A girl’s whose energy shined like a crest
She had to be beautiful, creative, and smart
I wouldn’t settle for a girl with a cold hardened heart

It seemed like a dream when we finally met
A feeling washed over me I couldn’t forget
You captured my heart in a lovers fever
I promised myself I’d never deceive her

Time progressed as a hurricane’s breath
blew cyclonic winds into our nest,
the tides of darkness began to infest
a relationship built on childish dreams,
fantasies like hypnotism that obfuscate
passion with abusive screams

Hear the rapping at the cellar door,
it’s tapping morse code and forebodes
the roads we have travelled will diverge,
it says our shadow essence will emerge
purified after we project the black inside
on the light we aspire to contrive

You see, I was a naïve boy with a heart of gold
who risked it all in an act so bold that even
God was flabbergasted,
I pledged my allegiance to you in a moment of deep despair,
when my soul was laid bare before the altar of grief,
I cried in your car and felt total relief,
then we made love in your backseat

But now, I pledge allegiance only to myself,
an undying reverence to my ability to cultivate
internal beauty, sophistication, and wealth,
to maintain my physical and mental health,
to find love without destroying my identity,
to live in the present without soulful indemnity,
to share my heart with careful consideration,
to not lose myself in aesthetic infatuation,
to trust my gift of artful intuition,
to trust my gut when it alerts my suspicion,
to let go of a loyalty that was never earned,
to let go of a woman whose bridge I’ve burned

What I felt was not love
but the heart’s pangs for attention,
an ascension to being the most important
person in the eyes of another,
to be chosen as The One,
as someone’s lover

Everything I ever wanted,
only
it was the wrong person
only
I wasn’t ready for real commitment
only
I did it because I was lonely

Give me peace or give me death
      the brokenhearted alcoholic’s breath
Fill my veins with renewed conviction
      an IV of restored positive intention
Take my hand at the dawn of the new moon
      the man inside will be here soon

Memories live in me as music
Lyrics are the electricity in my brain
Every word unlocks a door to self
And now,
now I’m dropping the drawbridge.

I tried to write a love poem, but all I saw was the bleak fog of forgotten dreams,
an endless list of broken promises; I walked circles in corn fields, flattening ***** cornstalks until they spelled out “love me.”

The brokenhearted are the first to sacrifice True Love for a
scientific deconstruction of a lover’s kiss,
rationalizations coded in clinical language,
“oxytocin this” and “dopamine that,”
it can all be explained,
there is no magic.

Scorned lovers dwell in limbo,
swiping right on the first piece of ***
who reminds them of the past,
whose photoshopped photo promises them Heaven;
True Love is now a simulation,
a cold affair with a blue light beaming back cute girls,
any one could be your Pam.

I fall in love with a screen over and over, until,
all that’s left is a bleak fog of forgotten dreams,
an endless list of broken promises;
all I feel is emptiness,
all I see is desperation.

I “Super Like” you, but I don’t even know you;
the dissonance hurts unconsciously,
poisoning a deeply dug well of romance,
the poetic truth serum secreted from the center of my heart is spoiled--
I hate how easy it is to lie,
to delete
to erase
to become a ghost.

I say, “I’ll talk to you later,”
but I never do,
you never even cared if I did,
or at least,
that’s what I tell myself in a bleak fog of forgotten dreams,
that’s what I write on my endless list of broken promises;
the sentiment is returned,
and love, True Love,
continues to hide in art, music, poetry, and film,
the last refuge for a romantic heart.

I often forget who I am
        or at least who I’d like to be
I often can’t see straight
        and figments of symbols become me
I feel the night’s baroque intention,
        I lay wasted in the kitchen
           Asking the gods for forgiveness

On warm days I’m a traveler
        betrothed to the road of existence
Leather-tramping for purpose with
        Time as my mistress
She allows me passage into the night,
        and all she requires is patience

I manage a smile during this trial by fire,
        ashes blacken my palms with a vengeance
Soot covered eyelashes flicker
        faster than the flame that birthed them
And when I’m finally judged as guilty,
        I won’t be surprised
   I knew this moment was coming.

Moral depravity is a commercial asset
*** is love
Love only happens to beautiful people
People with chiseled jaws unstrap silken bras
Bras are meant to be **** and not intelligible
Intelligence is secondary to primary skill sets
Set up the idyllic world in your imagination
Imagine that you will one day know the answers to everything
Everything will be simpler and no one will hurt you
You, the delicate breadwinner who scored perfect SAT's
Sat down by harsh lessons that cannot be studied with the help of Adderal
Add up all your triumphs and they will only be a 63 percent
You have failed life
Li[F]e.

Our routine entwines filaments of comfort
Finely woven between gaps of unoccupied time
My hands wrinkle with the loss of my
youth
Cracks and flakes of dryness and Future
I am only 23, but my soul says otherwise

My fingernails grow like tree branches
I cut them down and use them as swords
Battling imaginary creatures who stalk my shadow
Each victory harms my ego
Each trophy an intangible farce

Foreknowledge and foresight allowed me to
forego certain forgotten ceremonies;
I encounter them on the road to Manhood
Avoiding each by traveling the dark impasse
I cloak my yearning in a wool coat and a bright red scarf

Bound by absurdity,
I become the High Priest of Ritual
Anointed with the experience of Curiosity’s fluid influence
I wade in the shallow waters to catch my breath
I see you walking on the pier,
Pensive and lonely

**I am too late.

I feed my loneliness like
a beloved pet
However, my loneliness does not
love me like I do it

I strive to give it attention,
but it wants only to forget
the notions that I need it,
when I’m swelling with regret.

Someday I will burst
and my loneliness won’t be upset
For it knew what was coming…

The moment I always seem to forget.