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.