Softly Came the Love

A narcissism that doesn't exists.

After forty years of publishing Carl Ford turned himself in to the local nut house for a rather long stay in what he called "celestial cleaning of his mind and soul". What happened became rather fortuitous. He began to turn into a fiction of himself with a waddling gait, a terse one word response to all questions and finally his two former deceitful arms warmly embracing himself. The love came softly. As he waddled through his senior years the terse responses became a real blessing. He lacked any friends. What this did for the old man was a sweet loneliness in what could only be called "The narcissism that wasn't there".

Reviews

[Tree]

Your tight, compact poem-story, touched me. I liked the tone you employ in your poems, too, not too detached but just so, making the speaker: trustworthy.
I also liked the idea that maybe if we are pricks all our lives "narcissists", that maybe there is still hope for us all, maybe growing old really does force the ego to / crumble away, and we could love ourselves again. Or, at least embrace ourselves again, as did, your Carl Ford...

Well done, Alfred

[Alfred Kukitz]

Here we are together with minds that speak volumes and all I can say is thank you, thank you so much.

[Rene Salinas]

This make me feel alive. Funny how that works. Anything that pushes me to the threshold and makes me come out better is a battle worth fighting. And just when all that unreciprocated rage of thousand years held imprisonment, disgust and disconformity one day a flower brins about and slowly comes thorugh and you have to wonder how and who or whom.

You cant hold back the divinity of purpose

Thankyou Alfred

[jacob erin-cilberto]

self-deprecating artists...that is what we poets often are....there are some egotistical ones, but the percentage is slight in comparison....mostly we have pretty fragile egos.

but if we do it long enough...and have enough success at it...we finally start to grow older with the idea, that maybe we aren't too bad at this thing called poetry.

and i have several times come close to turning myself in...for sure.