Looking for Love

image borrowed from bing

Looking for Love

“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,

& therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”

--William Shakespeare.

Looking for love

is the universal throb within,

the beat-beat of cosmic harmonics,

the prime directive of the heart;

flirting, twizzling, just 

looking for love

in all those other faces,

in all those other eyes;

letting your primal need

for acceptance

for completion

for wholeness

be the finite focus of your existence;

even though you suspect that

looking for love

is a never ending journey,

an illusion, a phantom, a conceit,

because much like searching for truth,

what you ultimately find,

in your affairs of the heart,

is never totally absolute

or conclusive.

You were

looking for love

before you had language,

before you wrestled with

the demons of selfishness,

before you understood 

or identified your sexual preference,

before your genitals matured

and overrode the equation;

just out there

looking for love

like it was one of the basic needs,

not unlike hunger, thirst, & breath;

and hey, repeatedly you convince

yourself that you have found it,

or it found you, this mysterious

thing called love--but damn, too soon

you realize that what you have embraced

was merely lust,

or the media’s version of beauty,

or the preacher’s version of morality,

or your own mother,

or a mirrored image of your self,

and then you are introduced

to the bitch goddess of guilt;

or you see the repeated pattern

as the flavor, the ardor, goes stale,

as the veil is lifted, &

the honeymoon phase too soon wanes;

or worse yet, while out there

looking for love,

you too often get rejected,

and then you are hurriedly

introduced to a harpy called heartbreak;

but hopefully you find resilience,

& you dredge up the strength

to be at it again, putting yourself

back into the sticky fray,

looking for love

in noisy bars,

in cloistered churches,

in chat rooms,

within dating services,

until finally, yes,

goddamn yes, you find it again,

or think you’ve found it,

& no longer have the gnawing need to be

looking for love,

as the romantic cycle begins again. 

Perhaps, dearest heart,

at some point a shred of wisdom

can be woven into the weave,

the torrential tangle of emotions;

that eight marriages is not the answer;

looking for love

is not the solution,

that you will come to realize

what you must do

is to sustain the love you’ve already found,

through accommodation, communication 

& actual growth--

I’m just saying.

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over on dVerse Poets Poetics

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