Love’s Funny

My foreboding turns into delusion
As I told him he needed to be better.
I feel like the Asian mom haranguing 
The child because they aren't quite at the level.
Of course, he goes, and instantly gets accepted.
Oblivious to the fact that I am right.
I don't say these things to upset him,
Only to make him better.

Yet, maybe my pleonastic prose are his sour notes.
Maybe my long first paragraphs are his tawdry bends.
Maybe my attempt at Pentameter is his sweet picking
Or, perhaps, he is just better than me at everything.
His professors laude his writing skills;
All I see is that it needs work.
He plays his guitar well,
But then must play fast,
And when he does, various inarticulate notes creep in,
But perhaps I am the only one that hears them.
He beats me at chess, a game I've studied.
He beats me without studying it.
However, I have been quite dull these days
With my mind flattened by the stress.

Maybe I am just mediocre.
Maybe...

But, I tell him my folksy wisdom
To choose his notes.
And he succeeds, and I fail.
As he takes a test online for his class,
I say a silent prayer, "Don't let him fail."
Because my failure is enough to break me.
No door opens, my poems don't make it to the search page.
What's more frustrating, is that everything I do
Is hedged in, and I cannot break free of it.
I see him skipping over fences.
I ask myself why this is?
It's not jealousy;
It's just watching someone else succeed
While I languish in the pit I have dug for myself.
I speak, and it doesn't come true.
All the better if it doesn't.
Yet I can't help but speak...
I try to well up the words.
But they come out.
And I suffer for it,
Facing a wall of poverty.

Is it because I cannot trust in God?
Why would I trust in God?
God doesn't open doors for me.
Though I love him,
I feel like a caged pig,
A worthless, slovenly animal
Trapped in a cage;
But love is funny.
Any sense of true anger
Turns into thankfulness that my brother doesn't have to suffer this.
I am thankful that it's him suffering nothing,
And I suffer.

But, at some point,
The suffering needs to end
So I do not become a bitter man.
For love is funny,
In that I can be happy for my brother
Yet, for myself,
I will be unloving to all around me because my life is bitter
And all my joys are turned to darkness.

I Don’t Think I Can Love

I don’t think I can love

Like I used to.

I’ve become jaded.

I would like someone to penetrate my walls.

I would like someone to peer into my heartache

And draw from it something choice.

But, there is some resistance in me.

I cannot, as it were,

Draw happiness from another person.

It’s impossible.

It does not come from the self, either.

Where does happiness come from?

I suppose it comes from a clean conscience,

Knowing we had not done wrong.

I cannot have that,

So I look for the palliative of a wife’s mouth

To sooth me, both with her kisses and her kind words.

We all desire to be loved.

Each of us.

It is why dogs make wonderful pets

Because we enjoy the enthusiasm of the animal

Always wanting to be near us.

Cats, too, that they are exclusive

And we do not have to feel jealous of our friends

When they come by.

Horses are great pets because they are bigger than us

And teach us to overcome our fear; we tame them

Who can easily overpower us.

So much trust is needed for a horse

That the animal can kill you at any moment

But you still overpower it with force of intellect.

The cattle skip in the field

The fish loaf about, happy to eat and be big.

The birds sing their melodies.

Animals are such a wonderful kine

To the human soul.

I would like to define kine

As family. It means “Cattle Herd”

But we, ourselves as a family,

Are like cattle that roam here and there

Following our families to hither and thither.

We are kine, and I would like to have a blessed kine

Of loved ones;—which gets me back to why I need a wife.

I want my little pack of children to run about

And keep me company until I am old.

I want a cat, a dog and a horse.

I want a wife who is loyal, loving and affectionate.

It’s amazing how this cliche want is in every dating profile.

Yet, how many of us are deserving of love?

I’ve thought back to my crimes in youth

And see myself committing felonies.

I say to myself, “It is this reason I do not deserve love,

“But could I please be forgiven for it

“As the gospel promises?”

The answer comes to me,

But in my heart is could be either “Yes” or “No.”

I lean more toward the “No”.

It is why I’m afraid.

Not of death, just of living.

Life scares me, as it is an impending obelisk of looming catastrophe.

I cannot get a reign on it

Because some force greater than my will does not let me.

Who that is, I cannot know.

So I wish for a wife, children,

What I see is obstacle after obstacle

Preventing me from obtaining my earthly award.

Which I say “Award” not “Reward”

Because it was not earned.

How can I earn anything with such depths of sin?

Hidden to myself, maybe?

I do not know.

If there is any sin hidden from my eyes

I cannot know, but I want to awaken from the possibility

And live in the reality that other men take for granted.

Not speculate on all my past crimes

That never were committed

Because of two flagrant ones in youth.

But, back to the meditation.

I want a wife. Plain and simple.

And I will get one. Either here

Or in the afterlife.

Guinevere

I am angry with you

For what you didn’t do.

Left me, and did not come to me.

Why oh why did this mistress haunt?

Why did you flaunt?

Why did you show yourself

Just to disappear?

Around in circles we go

With no song able to inspire the insipid feeling

The one I have toward you.

It is not hate.

Rather, Guinevere,

You have made me lose faith in love.

Where were you when I needed you?

Where were you when I asked for you?

Hidden in the parcels of shadows

Like the very spectre I said I didn’t want.

You are more beast

Than human being.

Trotting with Lancelot as if a heated mare pissing blood;

You move like a dog, and lick the tongue like an adder.

Let me be…

Will you not?

Will this rage have to burn forever?

When will you simply let me be the man I’m supposed to be?

Rather, you will turn on me, like you always did.

The moment I was vulnerable with you

You cast me away like I was nothing.

Type, o fingers, type.

There is nothing but madness in you.

Do you want classical Greece

Guinevere?

Do you want Rome?

How about the whole world?

That you’d take,

But I, I you wouldn’t.

Have it all.

I want no woman except the one who’d make this decision:

If given the world or me

She’d take me.

For that was my heart toward you.

But I was weak with you, wasn’t I?

And that made you lose your love for me.

It was not love that you felt, heifer.

Leave me, for I spit at you

Guinevere.

Why do I even have to know your ways?

Adulteress.

A thousand stories are told of you

And no man can understand it

Because he does not know your ways.

Yet I, I had to meditate on it

And save me once more, I did not make the mistake

Of courting you

And then having you find one superior to me.

With my inferiority, you take me.

For this, my love is pure

And I heard, “Loyalty is what’s most attractive.”

Loyalty is not attractive, but money, fame and prowess

Those are what attracts the woman Guinevere.

Let no man fool you.