​You pledged your affections to me that day
As you snuggled up to me.
And nearly everyday since,
You'd sung me to sleep.
Your strength was the kind,
People like me couldn't be afraid of.
Because I knew, you'd use your might only to protect me.


You fell in love with me before I did
And I couldn't wait to fall for you soon after -  
That's how lovable you were.
That's how worthy of being loved you made me feel.
I think of that day; and today, and realise that
You've been the most loving
And the most fearsome person I have loved.
I wonder, how can someone personify
Both love & reckless anger at the same time?
Is it a twisted version of your love for me I see,
When you turn into the control freak that you do?

You say that some birds cannot be caged,
Their feathers are too bright.
You nearly caged the very bird you had freed
In many ways with your love.

And I am the bird who doesn't want to
Fly away from what had become a cage for her
Now that the door is open,
Because she'd fallen in love with her captor
Way before she knew she'd be terrified of him some day.

The solicitous Self,
with and in each exchange
of conversation's
     volley of commiserating
                     commissary verbages
words of curbs and gutters,
owns not its guilt
knows not good will
             nor for those whom shatter
in our drowning hours, unstill...


The Self is begging
for your idolatry's bastions,
wants you to find it beautiful
and superior
     above any other

attention and ingestion
gorging and hoarding
     the tid-bit compliments
     the cloud nine glances
succulent smiles / flirtatious lick of lips

the audience pumping up
its hot air ego-balloon
to beach ball widths

     a deadly kind of perdition
     for you, character fool
                    careless and distracted
blase' as a toad on a stoop...

It is a ****

the amorous Self is
     harmless, the beginning seeds
and whimsy / at flowering
in your hands:
              fluff and puff intimations
child-like glee / pleasing / blowing
nonpluss dandelions
nonthreatening
       in ruminations  
       N' stuff...

but like any ****
when it spreads and takes hold
        the real estate of your time and soul
it chokes and feeds
off your serene prosperity
of peace of mind
of identity

a thief of your ideas
     makes your dreams its own

It suffocates all others
behaves with dismissive airs
      like you it becomes
                   you, who has watered
this pest and catered to its musings
      like a sudden sunrise it appears
out of the blue appealing
a dandelion, quaint & demure
                    yet alluring

The ******* that is the selfish
solicitous thorn
knows its own nature
     far too well
hides its hideous
kink so none can warn  
it is a war
      
with Self
the attention *****


Self being compelled
as all else
a parasite to its growth
a virus and its host

what she now only has to give
in return:

assuage
her malingered spell

she breeds in you
     a ghost of once you were
wastrel grime
wasted time
an empty shell

Abhorred.

Careful what the Self
is selling
the solicitudes
of obsessions  
Possession
Suffocation
                     not much else...


No succor for the Self.