I must read too much of this damn stuff... you sit down and and try to write a couple chapters for the novel, and what does your treacherous brain come up with? more goddamned poetry. (This is just the third time I've felt obligated to post verse. for reference: 1 & 2)

you don't have to read it.

.

If honesty could rule my wayward tongue
I must admit that I know not my heart.

- ~~ -

I play the part of ‘injured lover’ well.
I weep, I wax dramatic on past love.
It always looks most sweet from far away
When time and misty memory cloud the heart
And tint rose-colored all past thoughts of her,
While skipping past the problems that seemed clear
When time it came to end the bland affair.

But what is truth? The passionate lifetime love,
Once had, now lost, now mourned ‘til end of days?
Or was it just a dalliance ‘tween two hearts,
A meeting of a stranger on the path,
An opportunity well met, well played,
And in due course, well left and no regrets?

Do I know love? Have I as yet known true
And tasted of its sweet and subtle fruit;
Or have I somehow erred, and grasping blind,
Some baser feeling for true love mistook?

And what, if not true love, is my desire?
If “love” is not what drives me to the chase,
Then why do I return to run this course?
I think Potential is this puzzle’s key.
Not Love, but in the quest itself I find
The needed impetus to drive me on.

Not love, but hunger now for love I feel,
and find that this deep yearning is my bread.
Not love, but find instead for love a thirst,
And in the thirst the wine to quench is hid.
Not love, but in my heart I see the place,
An empty hole where love should someday fit.
Can just the hint of future pleasure prove
Enough of motivation to keep on?
Not Love, but hope for Love.
It is enough.

It is not guaranteed rewards that drive me on,
I do not care to walk the certain path,
I walk in shadows, with naught else but hope.
I only have my faith, my trust, my dreams.

Perhaps I’ve let my hopes inflate too high,
Perhaps I stray too often into dreams.
I try to bring a pleasant dream to life,
I let myself be blind to how things are,
And always disappointment meets me here,
upon this bloody, broken battlefield,
Where hopes and dreams do combat every day
With harsh reality, which does not yield,
The only winner is despair and pain.

I risk so much to seek and find the truth,
And yet.
And yet I pause. To know for sure
That she won’t want to walk again this path,
That she has put those feelings in a box
Locked safe away, and now forgotten. She
will never feel for me what once she did.
(if e’er she did. I cannot know her heart.)

To know not just her heart and mind; I seek
Which of my own emotions linger still.

I have known love, I think. Though at the time
I did not know the feeling new-emerged,
For it was strange to me, and left me scared
And overwhelmed and weak, and all confused.
And I mistook the way it changed my soul
(For I feared change) and when I should have jumped
and rushed toward this precious hearts’ embrace
I ran from it, I ran from her. I ran.

I can blame none other but myself.
I am by my own words and acts betrayed.
Some things, it seems, are fated not to pass,
Life can be planned, but still, it must be lived.
You can not force a love to come at last,
You can’t take more than someone to you gives.

I have known love.
And I have felt the pain.
The knowledge was most dear, and dearly bought
The bill paid up with sorrow and regret
And most of all my shame, for this I had:
A chance at a full lifetime’s worth of love
An opportunity I threw away.
And learning to move on is not enough.

- ~~ -

If honesty could rule my wayward tongue
I must admit that I know not my heart.

A chance was lost, but not my only chance.
For I still have the will to try again.
There are so many hearts still left out there
And a poor poet still might find a match.

It is not with the mind these games are played
But with the heart, and hearts will find a way.