Love
I’ve changed my name to Melisande
and my hair to ruby red.
I am merely dead and somewhat living,
far away, instead.
You can not find me incognito
but in each memory enraged,
where I remain engaged - wed
to verbs and devoured by
the bounds of spoken word.
Our symbolic poems - the tongue’s blade
slices and dulls the senses to
Love's unbelievable way of inventing
this purgatory of weak rhyme with
historical expectations . . .
The wrong prayers beg
for the wrong miracles, even
as light grows dim
and determination
is dead-locked,terrified
and conveniently blind
as the stage silently empties.
You and I might ask; where are
the singing birds, knowing
the sparrows are voiceless and deaf.
What about lovely moments destined
to last in the singular of marital bliss
and happiness?
Yes, we try not to regret, but digress,
to write with an ounce of pity, for even
imagined love is hard to forget.
Deborah Russell, © 2005
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