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.