Tired of Love Poems

read write prompt #83 « Read Write Poem isn't exactly the inspiration for this one, but it's what got me writing, so in a way they are responsible.

Hearts dance on my sideboard.
On my bed head.
On my kitchen counter.
Hearts loiter in the bathroom sipping Mai Tais
Beside the porcelain swimming pool.
Hearts leave a disgusting, sanguine sheen
as evidence of their having been
on every usable surface in the house.

I am so sick of love poems.
I am so sick of having recently re-grown my heart
only to have it pound so fast and so hard
that it muscles through the bars on its cage
slumps down my shirt and onto the page,
greets the world with little arterial limbs,
and either immediately starts to dance
to the music of your memory or
Runs off through an open window or door
and gets lost in the street;
lost in so many different ways,
lost trying to get to wherever it is you've gone.

And I'm tired of dishonoring you
with a nightly seance involving me,
a bottle of rum, and a host of elated little blood pumps.
And the spirits we raise are only tricksters.
They're not you.
They smile too much and are happy too often
to really be you.
But still, I swallow their lies whole.
And I stay up all night long
wrapped in the warm fur of insincere memories
and remain thankful for the lack of acuity
that comes with the lack of sleep.

By the time your smile embarks
on its flaming course through the sky
I'm already tired.
I miss you.
But I'm tired of missing you.

Author's Note

I might have a hard time convincing you that I never know what'll come out when I write, but you'll have to take my word for it when I say I didn't know what I was doing when I wrote this one. I mean, Wow. Who died, right?

Reviews

[cest la vie]

I happened upon you quite by chance, and what a lucky chance..
you are a splendid writer.. really good..
Oh the love poem blues.. have we not had them all ourselves. Like you, I grab pen and good luck to whatever hits the page.

Excellent word play, lines and flow...

[Marie Anzalone]

Why does rejection by another make us turn so far inwards towards despair? It's like the ghosts of BF's and GF's past haunt our every dream, follow us silently as we pass from room to room, and leave little torn bloody footprints on our heart.

I absolutely loved the images this evoked for me. I liked the rhythm, the sense of ticking clock brokenness at 3:00 am. The sense of inadequacy when the narrator says, "I'm tired of dishonoring you"

A most thought-provoking write, not just in content, but in style and image. Loved this one!

[Alessander]

a mixture of personificaton and "letter" poem...it's a good way to a make an abstract more personable, and thus maybe more managable. This other poem did the same to "War" but it was a whole series of "letters" addressed to it some 50yrs afterthefact. Anyhow...I found this piece particuliarly clever - the imagery fanatically circles around the theme (kinda reminds me of an I.R. piece) physical heart "artieriel" blood""muscles" "sanguine" "pump" - so I love the physicality of it to keep from wandering into simply the sentimental, i.e. yet another love poem.

The irony of course, is that this is another attempt of conceptualizing love:

The spirits we raise are only tricksters

Wrapped in the warm fur of insincere memories

I like the mixture of spirits as in drinks but also ghostly or metaphysical. But the 'wrapped' line I think is a bit more emblematic of this piece: it just seems too strained (maybe because of the extended metaphor/analogy) and the wording doesn't really summon an image not found in the Medical Encyclopedia, and "swallow the lies whole" or 'heart in a cage' rings as cliche. I say this with your other poems in mind that are more successful IMO
Anyhow, the IDEA of this is still better than 90% of what is posted on this site - but ur other stuff raised the bar lol

[Angelheaded Hipster]

I like this piece. It speaks of truth, of love lost, gained, and lost again. I feel like this right here. I thought I had something, but I was apparently wrong, and Im quite tired myself. It hurts to remember things and the thing that stands out the most is always the smile...I wonder why that is.

[kemicka-chan]

I think the poem is great and I wish I could have so much of an open mind for writing.