Notes On The Word 'Love'

This note was previously posted back in 2005. But I thought it noteworthy or republishing.

Love

The word “love” has become a cliché, an over-used word who’s meaning has been reduced to a vague, trite, even laughable collection of emotions that song writers and poets pen, that teenagers aspire to attain, and that mature adults avoid mentioning for fear of being shunned by their peers. And what makes the romantic dreaming of love so commonplace, while the true and honest act of loving is so difficult to obtain? Is it that we have romanticised the once-upon-a-time and so totally swallowed the lie of the fairy-tale happy-ever-after that we’ve left the whole idea of love void of rational thinking? Is it that we are expecting to easily “fall” into love as opposed to work our way through it? And after all, is it really the ending to a story or a process of life?

Read poems about love by JMariah

Crumpled Words

It’s 4 AM on Monday morning when the traffic outside my window hums to life. And somewhere in my building a toilet is flushed, and running water spills through pipes behind a wall.

I sit staring at the four clichéd lines in my notebook, that suddenly become squished inside a crumpled ball of paper thrown on my bedroom floor. I pinch my eyes tight to get hold of any reasons that might be there - reasons for the emptiness that has suddenly opened up between us, reasons for the coldness, the hunger - but find none. And still,

the lines I send out spoil the words that return -

his carefully chosen words, that drip without emotion over staggered lips and fall like pulp from his thoughts of me squeezed through cyber space. He stares blankly, as the lines he wanted to say lie squished inside a crumpled ball of paper on his bedroom floor.

Can't Trust Anyone Any More

I wake up to find that trust is an unobtainable entity that breathes down the necks of the gullible, while dominating the shadows that blindfold their eyes. Sucked into their dreaming, conned into believing that man's word is worth saving, the simple clutch their hands together and grasp hold on nothing.

I blink back the tears that betrayal traces with a cunning finger over my cheeks and suck in a sigh of strength that fills my lungs with the will to press on. And I put no faith in man, for all men are liars and strive to achieve their own self-serving ends, regardless of the effects their methods have on others.

And I find all this, before I unfold my arms from across my chest and walk out into the dawn.

Read more on Trust

Sipping on Spills

I’m sitting in my favourite spot on the couch, pressing my pen to a blank page, hoping that my heart will overflow its pain and allow mere words to lay it out.

My pen falls silent.

I must have woken up quickly this morning, because thoughts and feelings from last night’s dreams keep mixing with the seconds that now try to pass before me.

I can smell the well-seasoned pork chops cooking in the oven, and my stomach anticipates the savoury goodness of their succulent juices. But perhaps I shouldn’t think about succulent juices, as I have just come from church.

A sip of white wine flows over the lip of my glass and across my tongue, promising to numb the feelings I am now not willing to see spilled on this page.

Sips spill cold and dry down my throat, and my mind smiles at the affects this liquid exudes. The hour draws a blank hand across my eyes, as they close in sleep. And once again my pen remains silent.

Abandoned

I am abandoned! Once again I am alone! Again I have poured out my heart in an attempt to love and receive love, only to find that it doesn’t last! That no matter how much I allow myself to let go of the past and move on, it ends! No matter how wide I open myself or how vulnerable I allow myself to be for the sake of loving so completely, my emotions are still toyed with, my love abused - mercilessly ripped out of my unsuspecting heart - and I am left abandoned! Alone! I really and truly must be unlovable! And I can’t even cry about it any more!

Well ok, maybe just this once!

Can't Smile

I am crushed between the unfriendly dying of evening and the constant blackness of night. I can't feel you, and I'm cold.

Yesterday's love making lingers in words scribbled on a page. My own breathing fills the room with a heaviness that erases fingerprints from my skin, mouth burns from my lips.

I can't see you. I can't hear you. And I can't smile any more.

Trust Me

I’m standing here on this rock yelling into the wind, begging for more than just the sound of my own echo humming back to me in my loneliness.

“Trust me.” I keep hearing you say, “Trust me.” And from far deep inside me, in that somewhere that hasn’t been reached in such a very long time, tears rise. And the place where smiles once warmed me sinks desperately under water.

The hollow swishing against my ear drums repels the sounds your tongue utters as your lips cunningly form around the words again, “Trust me”, like a crocodile saying “bite me”.

And I’m trapped between the love you say you have for me and the disdain by which you keep me beyond arms length. And it must be beyond arms length, because I reach out to touch you, only to embrace empty air – empty, stale air.

And no amount of tears will drive you to take back the actions you have set in motion against me. No amount of pleading will turn your heart around. So in the heavy dark of night, I bite my lip and defy the salt that threatens to sting my eyes, close my hands tightly over my ears to shut out the only words you smile at me – as you look down from your lofty position above me, pleased with the hold you have on me – trust me.

Silent Words

Words don’t reach their full potential when they are kept inside; when they swirl around in the mind like the smoke that goes before the lava in a mountain, only to be brutally silenced by someone else’s inability or lack of desire to listen, and therefore to possibly understand. Instead, they sit and grow cold in the swill of cooling passions or fester like pungent fungus in the still and quiet waters of the mind.

I heard once that words were thoughts, thoughts were power, and the pen is mightier than the sword. Too often we try to silence the power of others by silencing their thoughts. We cut them off in mid-sentence, overlapping their thoughts with ones of our own, as if our words were more potent, our thoughts more powerful. And we don’t even notice when the person silenced withdraws into himself, feeling powerless. We don’t notice that he quietly trades his tongue for the pen as his only outlet for the words that run around inside him, deciphering the silent state of his own mind. So we never find out where those words were coming from or where we could have taken them. We just don’t listen.

I’m alone with my silent words, that inside do no one any good but myself. And even for me they are a curse, because they are the fragments of my soul that I need to share with others. But others don’t seem to want them. Sometimes I encounter those who will graciously take the words I have to offer, smile, and feign acceptance. But later, I find those same words in trash bins under soggy bits of lettuce and used tea bags, or pushed to the back of a fridge behind the box of open baking soda that soaks all the flavour out of them.

And no one seems to notice, as I withdraw into myself, that I have touched the tip of my ball point pen to the tip of my tongue. They just tell me that it isn’t good to keep everything bottled up inside and pretend to coax more words out of me. But the words remain – silent.