SLAM!

Oh, dear! I just discovered that I blew it. Oh, well. It was fun to try. I'll post it anyway. No time to redo. Sigh.











I once believed that love was like a fine, ripe cherry,
And that everyone who was halfway kind of smart
And smiled a lot and laid down the fabric for their life
Would never have a love that’s only temporary.
After all, permanence was the role of the darted heart.
But it's all a lie. Love is a crystal that breaks with strife.

Alas, you romantic poets were definitely at fault.
You wrote your lovely sonnets; then you lived alone.
Shakespeare, you left your poor, lonely wife behind.
Lord Byron, you traded wife for lovers, marriage by default.
And none of your lies -- those beliefs on which I’d grown
Prepared me for my own love to sour and unwind;
Affection is more brittle than a dying autumn leaf.

I know now that love is crayons in the noonday heat.
When they’re left in the trunk to wait for better times,
Forgotten on the outdoor table or in the ocean sands,
They lose their shape and melt into a flat, flaky sheet
Of distortion. The color is still there, but no rhymes,
No sweet nothings, no kisses of lust, or held hands,
Just outpoured words, and then the final drumbeat.

Maybe love is more like milk left out too long,
Abandoned on the table, pooled inside a bowl
To thicken into slowness, dense as curded cheese,
Leaving lovers unaware, until the stench smells all wrong.
Instead of amiable chat, the words commence to freeze,
And each conversation results in grief and disbelief.

Next arrives the chaotic slide that pushes down and out,
No more chance to resurrect what was possible and not,
For there’s no more time to look for what is right or wrong.
The mind is churning, eyes crying; you’re filling up with doubt,
When your spouse says he really wants the antique teapot,
And your rage at the injustice becomes a daily tag-a -long.

I once believed in poets. Bryon, you used to soften my heart.
Shakespeare, if alive, even Juliet would eventually learn
That when love is a fine, ripe cherry, sweetened on the tree,
It plummets down like a rotten apple and is often rather tart.
So no more romantic poets; your poems have given me heartburn.
I’ll take my career, my stock certificates, and my closets free.
For love’s no more than soured milk, and its falseness is a thief.