Thursday, September 26, 2019

Love Is



painting by Elena Kotliarker.


Love Is

“I love you simply, without problems or pride; so
intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.”
--Pablo Neruda.

Love is magma muscle,
the vertex of the flesh husk
we choose to inhabit.

Love is the engineer
that directs the plethora of emotions,
the executive producer
for the daily broadcast
we consider as our life.

Love can, and perhaps must,
overpower the darker impulses,
can smooth them out,
even eradicate them.

If love were a hormone,
it would spring from the heart,
treating it like a railroad round house,
providing for itself several routes of egress.

Love is not lust, not greed or avarice
or selfishness--no, it is the antithesis
of these;        selflessness,
                      vulnerability,
                      integrity,
                      honesty,
                      near transparency

Love can be too often misunderstood,
misinterpreted, misaligned and misused
by a sweet tooth,
     an erection,
     ego, preferences
     and inhibition.

Life can be reduced to mathematics.
Love can combine math and heart emissions,
and provide startling solutions
to problems, diplomacy, negotiations
and relationships.
Love can be the departure & the destination
                     the before and the after,
                     the darkness and the light,
                     the reason d’etre,
                     or Cupid’s curse.

Jesus wept,
out of love
and the lack of it.



Glenn Buttkus

Metaphors

Posted over at dVerse Poets Pub

14 comments:

brudberg said...

I really love this which is almost an essay of what love is, a bridgebuilder... all that is good... the last stanza of Jesus weeping also tells of its complexity.

Frank Hubeny said...

Nice lines: "If love were a hormone,
it would spring from the heart,"

Kim M. Russell said...

Powerful metaphors in a poem about love, Glenn, and some quite masculine, especially ‘magma muscle’ and the lines:
‘If love were a hormone,
it would spring from the heart,
treating it like a railroad round house,
providing for itself several routes of egress.’
I love the lines:
‘Love can be the departure & the destination
the before and the after,
the darkness and the light,
the reason d’etre,
or Cupid’s curse.’

Ken Gierke said...

You have here black-and-white, yes-and-no, truth-and-lies - all of it in testimony to the commitment of love. And so true.

Jade Li said...

Tight write. I love this line: "the vertex of the flesh husk" I'm glad someone knows something about love. I'm still with the Joni Mitchell school.

tonispencer said...

The last three lines in this sums it all up.

Grace said...

Glenn, this is a beautiful poem. I love every line.

robkistner said...

This is quite beautiful brother. I really like when you unleash your PBShelley. You have a romantic heart, seasoned with a tad of righteous anger. Helluva write dude — loved it!

Misky said...

This phrase really caught me unexpectedly: "misaligned and misused by a sweet tooth"

Linda Lee Lyberg said...

Wow Glenn. This is one of your best!

Truedessa said...

This is a powerful message of what love can represent. You took the reader down a
winding path, breathless wondering where it would end.

JIm Feeney said...

I love this Glenn...the sheer originality of your metaphors...one to come back to, again and again...JIM

erbiage said...

amazing sentiments in here glenn. though it felt disjointed in parts, i've felt these things myself.

lynn__ said...

Original and powerful; apt metaphors for love!