The 1980 Series

One

"Unfair, unjust,"
my mind cried out to me,
"he does unto you a wrong.”
"Quiet," said my heart,
"love is to love
through wrongdoing
unfair or unjust."

Two

Don't go they said,
he is cruel.
He will hurt you again.
Or you may be happy,
and being happy
forget to write in rhyme.
I am here
not totally unhappy
and the Muse not a stranger to my door.

Three

There is so much to love in you
which you don't even know, my love.
And so much that you think draws me
to you which does not.
But I am practical:
I answer no rhetorical questions
I live no rhetorical dreams.
If the choice is between
dull endless misery without you
and sometime-agony with you,
I'll take agony every time.

The Young Unknowing

Perhaps I feel too much.
Perhaps I would love thus
any man I loved,
giving him my all.
Perhaps you are the target
of my passion and zeal.
"I am a victim of your love"
he sighed, and turned to sleep.

Laughing with Rasputin

You hum and sing and laugh.
It makes my heart dance
to see you wiggle your ears,
fluff up your staid beard
into this rambling Rasputin.
Turns my smile into
a tickle in my throat.
Eons since we laughed together
or threw back our heads,
roaring at some old remembered joke.

Pieces of Me

There was too much of me
swirling around you
engulfing you
suffocating you
to feel like pleasure.
I step back now and see
how to offer myself
in measured moments.

Valentine's Day

Don't look for what
I ask of you
to show me love;
flowers, flowered
words of praise,
love expressed
hard or tender.
Find a way that
says for you
all you want
to show me love.

Tithonus

Emptiness surrounds me
to vie with the emptiness within me.
This hollowed gape was once
my hallowed cape, valley, and mountain.

All nature was me and I nature.
Trees, grass, sky, rain did in me dwell.
Now all in nature, as I am,
is sleet and ice, and falls and swells
with every rising falling pulse of mine
and slows….or does it stop?

No, that for me can never be.
For I live on and on to see
man fight man; country, country.
This wish on me no wish can be.
The curse within, the curse without.