Saturday, February 1, 2014

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

Would you like to hear the author read this Love Poem to you?

16 comments:

Mary said...

Excellent commentary / poem, Glenn. I think you are right. Everyone from the youngest of babies is looking for love. It is one of the basic needs. (Do you know Maslow?) And it is quite a journey each person takes as he/she looks. And it often is not a straightforward journey, has detours (and heartaches) along the way. But...yes...a mature love (once it is found) has to be sustained. Love is art, always unfolding. But it also takes just plain work!!

Claudia said...

yeah - love is something that needs care and fuel to grow and blossom... and it's often hard work.. i sometimes compare it with a garden... if one is wild and out of shape it seldom helps to move on to another.. but we need love like we need food or air to breathe..yep

Brian Miller said...

love is def the thing we are all seeking and we look in some of the strangest places...esp when we feel without we settle for the temporary fix which often leaves us feeling all the more empty....love takes effot and persistence...and patience and willingness.....

Gabriella said...

Great poem, Glenn! You have described a heart's journey, from birth till it mature, in a most perfect manner. There are ups and downs and hopefully eventually we find the one we were meant to find and make sure to sustain that love.

Anonymous said...

looking for love in all the wrong places! Yet still looking--a common theme in human existence, I fear. k.

Anonymous said...

Glenn every time I came to that phrase' loooking for love' I began humimng that tune. Now I can't get it out of my head. >KB

Laurie Kolp said...

I repeated that pattern several times before my husband and I found each other!

avalon said...

Yes, stop looking and it will come, or start giving and forget about receiving.
Still we all do it, or have done it at some stage of our lives, even if only for a short while.

Scarlet said...

Looking for love, i enjoyed the commentary specially the ending ~

The challenge is in sustaining & letting that flicker flicker on & on ~ Happy weekend Glenn ~

brudberg said...

Indeed.. if you constantly looking for love and include everyone else's approval.. then you just gonna search.. better nurture what you have found and let it grow.

Abhra said...

Truly beautiful saga - elaborate and beautiful.

When you say - we were looking for love, before we had language - I loved that stanza most.

kaykuala said...

Looking for love is a never-ending quest. And rightly said Glenn when one realized at that sad moment it was not all that real. It can be puppy love,lust all wrong signals but love. Very exhaustively dealt with. Great!

Hank

Wolfsrosebud said...

i liked how you ended this with wisdom

Victoria` said...

Looking for love, I believe, is our basic motivation and unending quest. At times it seems elusive, at times illusion. But we never give up until we understand we find it in the giving.

Vandana Sharma said...

A heart filled with love has nothing to worry about.

vivinfrance said...

looking for love is a fool's errand,
finding it a mare's nest, keeping it like chasing rainbows. Your polem is thought-provoking.