Lovesick

Hope is a mine shaft
with sagging wet timbers
rotted nearly to the middle
it's dark and black in both directions
and I'm frantically preparing new timbers
to keep it from caving in
I'm so dirty
and my back is screaming at me
but I'm not ready to leave
despite the worsening situation

For her
freedom comes in solitude
the peace of the quiet perfections
loving herself like a holy relic
constructing her perfect altars everywhere
while the moon and flowers secrete
their poetess bait
always surrounded by delicate things
and the delicate superstitions
of millennia ago
her feelings have become
Mosaic Law in her heart
and I am just a Gentile
a simple man with no Kabbalah
and filthy children
unroyal and unequal
unlearned and blunt
I drag too many broken things around
in my broken down old cart
the one I'll drag around
until I'm crooked and beaten by time
I'm made for work
maybe not for courting queens
or for the decoding of souls

Hers is a freedom that is deeply offended
when a man as imperfect as me
comes in to try but fails
with his dirty boots
and clumsy love
and rusted sword
and dirty wooden-wheeled wagon
full of boys and broken things
I came with good intentions
but no turns were right
I could not satisfy her
all the patience I could muster
wasn't enough
all my fallen man woundedness
was too much
all my attempts at witnessing her
were inadequate at best
and damaging at worst
There was my breathing dog
my boyish boys
the dirt under their nails
and how they can't remember
the cloth napkin rule
their warring mom
who sued me with her boyfriend
and the devastation that created inside
to know I had more battles to fight
a fourth tour with no breaks
There were the times I yelled at her son
the time I yelled in her house
my lines in the sand
the lines that got trampled
and the ones that held up
and hurt her heart

Ultimately,
she decided that being alone
was the best thing for her
that I am not up to the tasks she needs
not a man she wants afterall
a man she did too much for
a man she never got enough from
a man that wouldn't
scoop her and her son up unconditionally
so she yelled at me one last time
when I was stuck on my couch
and left my life
with the finality of a guillotine

I have joined a chorus of headless men
I have failed, executed
along with her last long-term man
and if you were to ask us about her
we would easily say in unison

She's a Queen

with a thousand things
gracefully unsaid
because we were pretty decent men
in different ways
and we both understand
that we were rejected
by a woman who knows she is great
and demands greatness in return
many greatnesses
we didn't measure up for her
we weren't enough
for our own particular reasons
in our own particular ways

So I try to keep that hope of mine
for a second act with her
from caving in on me
and it's hard
because I can see how happy she is
I can read it in her love poetry
to her porch and to herself
her songs of life without me
the love songs to my absence
they have sweet Spring melodies
and ring in my ears like dynamite.