when love’s mismatched
two people see
the same things rather
differently
what feels to one
like life’s new birth,
feels to the other
drudgery
you learn both sides
of mismatched love,
and see how wide
feelings can swing:
while one feels nothing,
not at all,
the other, almost
everything
She was his love, behind the fence, but he was loth to show it; She was his only, long, true, love -- but didn't know it. He built them castles made of ice, to float with weightlessness; His every thought, of her, while she could not care less. Behind the fence was where she stayed, while he grew old with waiting -- A love made up of naught, but one anticipating
I have these
Fugitive visions
They come and go like
Dappled sunlight through windblown leaves
I see you in them
I seem us in them
But the fantasy that burns within me
Burns out
Before I ever
Get a chance
To see your face
The barrier that can’t be scaled,
The wall that’s never coming down;
The distance that’s too far to cross,
The adjective that has no noun
The meaning that no word entails,
The cooling breeze that leaves a burn —
The desperate love I feel for you
That you won’t know, and can’t return.
The field of empty lullabies,
The children we could never share;
The heart, rejoicing as it dies,
The you that I see everywhere
The smile upon your winning face,
Your open heart, ethereal —
The desperate love I feel for you
That you don’t share and cannot feel.
A dream, remaindered for a pence,
A selling cheap, and bargain made;
The friendly look you cast my way
As I repaint what I’ve portrayed
The spring, the harvest, and the grain –
The death of all expectancy —
The desperate love I have for you
That you could never have
For me
It’s strange how tangible is lack,
How much reality
Is in the things we wish we knew
That never come to be.
The touch I’ve wanted long to feel,
The taste I’ve never savored:
They’re still within my fevered mind,
And that has never wavered —
It’s strange how very real it is:
These things I’ve never known
Are I’ll I’m left with, in the end,
Imagining
Alone
So he loves her, but she does not love him;
A story countless through the ages told.
A type of madness now his mind infects,
Each day he tries to shake its baneful hold –
But wonders, what technique or set of words,
Or clothes, or gifts, might cause her heart to fill?
Then curses his obsession, for he knows:
She doesn’t love him, and
She never will
He loved her like the summer wind,
She gave him life and hopefulness,
He loved her like a happening
That turned a pointless day to bliss
He loved her like nobody could,
But it took little study
To see how she saw him, which was
Precisely as
Nobody
Four different classes, four different desks –
Four different views across the room –
A smile, a look, a fleeting glance,
A few words exchanged waiting to go out the door –
And it’s secret — it’s a real secret —
No best friends know; no parents, no siblings –
Just furtive thoughts round about bedtime,
Just… wondering, looking over during a football game
At someone
Ensconced in a different crowd
Secure in ignorance
While a secret, faithfully kept
Dies, like his soul
A slow
and lingering
death
When she doesn’t love you,
You know there’s someone better somewhere,
Someone more a man than you can be
She doesn’t think much of you:
She doesn’t feel you everywhere,
The way that you do her, and constantly —
For this is love:
It is an ache,
It is the knowledge that you lack
Whatever all that it might take
And there’s no bringing back
What never was —
When she doesn’t love you,
There is no place for you to hide,
No snowstorm, and no hidden place or vault —
For though fraught with desire,
Sometimes we cannot have the life we want,
And we are left with knowing
Who we aren’t and that it’s all
Our fault
(Originally written in 1989)
