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Making Marriage Work

Pimping out Love in Poetry Poem…Some love affairs go on too long in our heads, the truth is we poets can easily become our own sad poems, half falling over ourselves day and night, wearing mufflers, blinders and Mona Lisa smiles, our blow fish egos becoming nightly bridge walkers, roof servants, or chimney sweeps.

So Indefinable, undeniable, breathing in the soot of our heart’s desires and all the rest of the idiocy we poets fall heir to when conjugating our hearts and pimping our love into poetry.

Bertrand Russel says, “To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life already are three parts dead.” I’m not sure I agree. Sometimes fear leads us in many unknown ways. I will admit a time in my life when I feared loving again. But, it was during that time that I learned to love myself. I have been married three times so I do believe in marriage. I was married twice to the same man and with two kids in common, our love affair lives on. Both of us wanted to change for our kids and our love; but neither of us did.

Love is a double edged sword that can cause elation and/or sadness. Unfortunately for some of us, fear often dictates how much love, happiness, and success we think we are or are not worthy of. Most of us are consumed with how to find love and where to look for it? Some of who have been hurt by love must learn how to go on living without it which is hard to do. Those who have experienced heartbreak like me have become masters at inventing excuses to justify their inabilities to sustain love. It is my opinion, even when we’re coiffed, perfumed and eager for love, we must be deserving of it before it can blossom. Love is one of those intangibles we cannot touch yet it touches us in so many ways. I firmly believe each lover leaves a piece of his soul with us and we leave a piece of our soul with them.

If you’re lucky enough to experience a connection with a genuine soul mate you laugh at the same things. You might set aflame every cell in your body when your bodies touch. Your relationship is not just about sex. You are two souls whose minds, conscious and subconscious fit effortlessly. I remember my own experience with a soul mate back in my late thirties. I still believe he would be with me today had he not been with her first.

He was always ready to take me in his arms when we were together. He was a happy man, settled comfortably in an affluent suburb. He had no children. He must have carried 100 pictures of her in his wallet. We, on the other hand, were careful not to take pictures. I still carry his picture in my mind’s eye, looking for him in every stranger that passes me by. We started out as friends only. We really dug each other’s sense of humor. He got laid off from his job and did not want to tell his wife. So, instead of working he spent his days with me. I worked nights so, again, we fit each other’s circumstances easily. We became addicted to one another. It is true with our steady diet of sex we both lost a lot of weight and looked great. We had a lot of energy. I wrote the following poem years later with him still in my mind.

Money, Grammar & Endless Love
My brain is working overtime, thinking about money, grammar and endless love, what shoes I should wear, how to eat and how much not, I don’t know what I’ll do, if my Yorkies won’t stop barking soon, I drag my tired body, from place to place, dreaming about justice and injustice,

and gorging myself on winged poems, and it seems like I never have enough money to go around, and then words worry me, too, like would, could, shall, or should, and why not do?

Even though my pen may have a moral plan, it cannot out-argue my past, because just this morning, I was dreaming of budding twigs in my graying hair and dancing with an endless love, I was thinking how his eyes flashed with fire when he looked at me and how his always smiling lips tasted of chocolate even in my dreams.

The Words, “Know Thyself” were first found inscribed on the walls of the Delphi Temple in the ancient city of Athens, Greece. It took almost 20 years to know myself. It is sad many of us only see our reflections through the eyes of others. When our affair was over, I had changed. Maybe, I saw my potential for the first time. I stopped looking for happiness in the arms of others. I wanted no one now, not him, not anyone else. I remain punished not for my sins by my sins. While I was fiddling with this post, a young, brilliant and handsome boy/man, walked into a theater and open fired on kids and adults for no apparent reason at all other than he was obsessed with the Batman trilogy. The justice system wasted no time in bringing him to trial. He sat next to his public defender unemotional, with eyes large and frightening. He wore the look of a lost clown with his multicolored bed-head hairdo. All that education and potential went to waste. He spent so many years learning about others, he never took the time to know himself.

Americans are stereo-typed as go-getters, anxious to out-do and out-have all others. We must know ourselves before we can love and respect life maturely and be satisfied with life’s gifts. We’ have got to stop living our lives blinded to the gifts of others. We have got to start being kind and observing the needs of others.

Over the years that followed, I finally grew into the person I was always meant to be. I wrote poetry and articles for wellness, mine and yours. Thank God for the internet, self-publishing and my inner child who needed to know she was worthy. She had talents. She was not unlovable. She could love herself with a mate or without a mate. We shape our present and our future by the choices we make not only for ourselves but by the choices we make for others. I chose to reach for that golden ring of love once more and we have been together 22 years. Not married. We just fit together. Rachel Madorsky, in her book, Symphony of Karma, says “The human Soul can be kept pure only if it’s given the freedom of choice. Free will and freedom of choice are the greatest gifts of the Creator to humankind! Each of us has the ability to create our own Karma.” I feel like I’ve finally outgrown my old bad-tempered karma and now I am free to write about love, marriage and sex. Ursula K. LeGuin says, “It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters in the end.”

Below are a few of journeys in poetry. Enjoy.

Tears are like Polliwogs,
It is nice to think of tears like polliwogs
swimming around in a mortal’s eyes,
evolving into well-adjusted higher forms,
with better motor control and hand-eye co-ordination,
ascending rather than descending,
bending rather than breaking,
reaffirming rather than hurting,
and smiling rather than frowning,

It’s nice to think of sorrow as water,
and all those tears escaping where swelling pain had been,
It’s nice to think our sorrow will soon evaporate just like our tears,
turning our attention to helping others evolve.

Fates have left me a celestial artisan,
my soul sprinkled with passionate thoughts of God’s love,
when I’m tired, let their angelic wings fan me with healing energetic breezes,
light my eyes with the lamps from God so I can see what is right or wrong,
and bless me with “celestial” knowing, wit,
wryness, color and an angelic sense of timing,
and let my optimism fall like seeds to the moist warm ground
and take root in the footsteps of all lovers.

I remain like every other flower in the garden
drinking in the pearled dew,
and hour after hour a female willow trembles knowingly at our pain,
a swan sings close by, both of us living by breath alone,
Sometimes I moan a little in self-pity,
”Where is my God, why has he forsaken me?”
I shake my fist towards the sky,
the weeping willows cry for me,
we’re all feeling disowned,
We’re weak and weary standing here at attention,
dreaming dreams no mortals dare to dream,
the silence unbroken in my pearl-less pelvis
while the weeping willow packs her trunk for our trip to Nevermore…”

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