Some passion is not passion

it is poison

two people figuratively and literally

splintered, rent by its result.

I live for you, and that is wrong

I’ve always known it—

you are the parenthesis to my empty sentence

without you—there is no without you—

yet—

There was a life before, something emergent and bold

laying claim in fallow ways—so what if the jewel was

a common stone without shine? And her head stuffed with

darkness pollute and pain—

she could have survived because she did survive

Leonard Cohen understood that, when he said; “Strength is

just surviving” — he had no need for membership,

bouquets of friends thronging accomplished tables

enthralled lovers, accolades, much stamped passports

honorary PhD’s, mausoleums with real artisan iron

—corruption has its own gilt

he sang into the gutter, watched the bare foot child

save a worm from drowning and found hallelujah.

It’s not you who has stolen this from me—

I may well have never possessed it—I let it slip

like a heirloom unwatched, falls and is lost.

A time when—I lay in grass that smelt like summer and

held the wrist of a German girl, with a 90’s bob and kohl

smudged eyes and shimmered in her attention like a

fat dove, singing from her roost. In that moment, and other

spilt, languid, creamy hours where violet light lit

velvet blue sofas with such the right caress, life was

less pockmarked with horror

her eyes, brown and liquid, tinted by ecstasy

illuminating, refracting my own—possibility

it wasn’t love; it had no burden of love, no required proof

crumbling, no disintegration, taint, the passion

simple, momentary, we didn’t have to sit there and

watch ourselves die.

I watch us die. A film with improper ending, the actors

unable to alter course, sent crashing into one another

with the force of distain.

They said; familiarity breeds contempt, and I fought

that pronouncement like quicksand, refusing to relinquish

fight—till the day you walked away smiling, the sharp

edge of your knife buried in my chest, up to ornate hilt

then I saw my foolishness, for years over years—

like catching water with a butterfly net—

some people do not want you to stand with them

defend them, protect them, it is not always

a role but a burden, you become a nag, a thorn

without easy removal—forgetting you were once

cherished, and in that moment—love? Love is savage

a cruelty, a regret, and the loneliness of being

with someone whose eyes are empty—feels more

terrible than any time alone, for some passion

is not passion, it is

poison. And venom?

Venom is the only one who knows

the fatal dose.