The A to Z of Love

Absence is the heart of Love a brutal
Board game for two or more
Capricious players intent on self
Delusion a power struggle not
Enlightenment or hope for the spiritual
Frisson of two strangers touching skin
Gestures an attempt at unexpected soul
Happiness is a voidable experiment not
Intended to last more than ninety nine
Joyful but repetitive days when ruinous
Keepsakes fall like autumn rain before
Love breakfasts lessen to burnt toast
Marmite with cold coffee because
No-one notices cloud formations or
Opens their eyes to truly see another
Person is not the perfect answer to every
Question but more questions that require
Rumination and lead to rheumatism and
Slavery but do not give up hope bitter
Times do not last and love is not worthless
Undressing in the dark nor a virtuous
Virus causing fever flush and accelerated
Weeping at weekends instead
Xpect expectations to be compromised
You will not be satisfied unless you are a
Zealot intent on annihilation.

AAA67471-42A9-4F23-8449-3C6F845DF735 — Photo by the author

Love and Hate

You are nothing but a clatter of bones in a dressing gown
coughing up phlegm over our breakfast table.
You are nothing but a slither of liver, lungs, kidneys, brain,
faithless heart pumping white crimson around and around.
You are nothing but a hundred billion neurons firing arrow
thoughts about yourself into a mist of grey.
You stab the butter knife in the marmalade.
I want to stab it in your eye, see your ego bleed out.

Suddenly you look at me and describe a dream
you had about building a house from Plasticine.
As you turn your face and smile, morning sunbeams
blaze just below the curve of your cheek
bone, the place I kiss before we sleep
cool and sharp as an underground stream.

18E29552-BB50-4C93-A763-43CC52DBA545 — Photo by the author

Recycling

The dog named Black Balls watched
from a safe distance as Ivan shoveled
manure at Tundra Corner. Stripped
to the waist, sweat beading his grand
moustache, lush despite his eighty years.
When he found the gold ring he stopped
dead, yelled ‘охуеть!’ and then ‘соси хуй!’
The hens fled to the moonshine shed.

The vintage wedding ring, twenty two carat
and inscribed forever, lingered like winter
sunsets in the empty Heinz soup tin
where Ivan kept his razor and comb.
One morning as he waxed his Stalinesque
twirls before the tarnished mirror
he finally decided on the rich widow
with the plump rump from Paradise Farm.

Note:- I am unsure of the accuracy of the Russian swear words so if anyone can advise their help would be appreciated!