Method of Love
Who can understand the way of a man with a maiden, and
From whence springs love so sudden, indeed, so irrepressibly?
O, how like deranged scientists we are when locked within the grasp of a lady,
Mumbling our equations of love!
They are the control…
If they tell us naught, then what may we assume or how can we hypothesize?
Reduced to jabbering idiots, our hearts melt away,
Victims of the inexorable, incalculable
Method of Love.
* Wrote this in high school
Losing Me
It’s not the years so much as the mileage.
The injuries. The memories deserting their posts.
Burn bright and
The darkness won’t dare to touch you
For a time,
But everyone has a sell by date.
After that your light will dim,
A shooting star flickering out
Unable to hold off the night,
While others are still shining in their mediocrity.
Was it worth it?
The exhilaration?
The conquests?
The passing glory?
Doing what others would not dare?
Or simply could never pull off,
Lacking sufficient perseverance
To achieve remarkable skills.
The Drive.
Most simply lack the drive
That rules the hearts of others.
That inability to thrive
Without taking a plummeting dive
Into dangerous delights
Which can only be found
Through victory in the face of perilous defeat.
My Drive.
Pushing me on despite
My mounting physical decrepitude.
Killing my heart by degrees
With every dulling knock against my razor edge,
Now dented and nicked,
Dying to be its true self again
And cut the universe in a fit of fury and scorn,
Refusing to let its power,
Once fearful in symmetry,
Slowly dim, unnoticed,
Having failed to inspire awe and dread.
When does the lion cease to want to kill?
Can a warrior be content without challenge?
Without noble triumphs earned by his own hand?
Can a man slide into licentious quietude
Without some surge of lust compelling him to
Prove, to himself, that he is yet still a real man,
Capable of being, at the most basic level,
What genetics say he must?
What primal instincts scream is his true measure.
When does the lion lose desire
To mount the lioness and growl and bite
With each commanding virile thrust?
When does dominion lose its taste?
In work and sex and mighty deeds
Or any bid for power
Our fallen hearts are slaves to by
Unquenchable ambitions
Yearning to glut themselves
On our own choice proclivities?
And can a man, no longer himself, live
Without living a lie
That slices through his guts,
Like some decades long act of seppuku,
Which will never successfully
Unburden the shame he feels?
An undead beast who having lost the flame of life,
Merely stumbles and feels about,
Hungering for its warmth once again,
Ceaseless, without rest.
Can a man find himself?
Reinvent himself as age accumulates like a stalagmite,
Hardening into an immobile shell,
A paralyzing restraint, irresistible, inevitable?
Can he take his flesh and intellect,
Broken now like a shattered clay vessel,
Reform it into something different and new?
Something with purpose?
Intentional function?
Value?
An image warranting respect
That could bring him glory
Again in some other way?
Because that’s what really matters
To us dreadful, driven few.
The Glory.
Stories, memorials and grand accomplishments
That live on for generations
After we have passed,
Our end burning bright
One last time,
Instead of quietly fading away.