"If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be.*" - Wuthering Heights.

beauty, is in love's eyes,
i once read that if he still makes your heart
anchor itself to your abdomen,
after three months, it's love.

well, my metaphors are wasted on you,
my words are a fancy way of
expressing myself and they contain
too much of you.

you've got a temper,
enough to rumble under these streets,
and collapse what i've been building.

i get sick of building blocks,
love is child's play, and i just want
us to be adults.

i promised to love you, and i do in
my own odd ways,
you broke my heart, i broke yours.
i still want you to know,
a mosaic wouldn't be so beautiful,
without all the cracks.

I can't trace the crown of my indifference towards you (or anyone else) to a definitive source.
Whether you are strung to me or I to you,
our union imports
several interpretations.

You might be like fishing wire:
binding limbs, constricting movement;
if I deviate, I suffer your sharp cut of resistance.

Maybe you're yarn: soft, nurturing; but again, any move that falls outside the lines of your predicated design--any undue tightening or loose end--results in chaos.

Or perhaps you are the hand that draws the line:
you, the invisible puppeteer
who governs my every wayward glance
or dishonest act at the whim of your object, your desire;
one string leads to the
magnetism of your cologne
and another, the heat
of your knees in fitted jeans
against mine.
If it be that,
then, my indifference would serve as my aide,
a final desperate cling to autonomy.

But what if we were both cast
in the same web, rendered useless
through entanglement, would we
claw towards each other, content
though the silk grows thick
with every reach?
Would we tear our way to liberty?
Or if we were to find that thing-
the source-
and cut all ties,
would magnetism wind us up again?

If I unravel, what would you do?
If you unravel, would I leave you
in a pile at my feet?
Would I cast dead strings aside
and embrace the freshness-
raw and bleeding but alive-
beneath the rage?

Oozing goozing syrup drips from you lips
It disgusts me
With each drip a lie unfolds
Your sugared teeth as yellow as corn.
Dripping, slipping, slurping.
Your smile disgusts me.
As the ooze starts to fall from you cheeks.
And I glance at that sick smile
I can feel my head spinning
My teeth aching from your sick twisted smile.

The sweetness is not like chocolate. No.
It's the sweetness of swallowing honey with a dry mouth.
It stays with you.
Nothing to wash it down

Your smile gives me cavities,
that hurt almost as much as you do.

i was taught to be a man
and manage my emotions,
but i wonder if i can just
get through the motions.

© Matthew Harlovic

my mother always said
"don't fall in love with a poet"
they pretend to love you
but what they really love
is writing about loving you
you are mere words to them
feelings cheapened by a page,
dusty grey typewriters,
and many unfinished drafts
of lovers both old and new,
you are the question mark,
but not the answer,
they are searching for ?
person unidentified: mystery
the page wanderer,
each poem a missing
person poster to cover their
bedroom walls.
they cannot love something
that is in their head
poets are the loneliest of
all people, my mother said.
they write to immortalize
what has long passed.
to live within their words,
but not reality,
lost souls writing suicide notes
and proclaiming it art.