I do not speak,
Out of bitterness or sarcasm, tongue in cheek.
Mockery does not lie behind these passages.
I speak of love that was unable to be salvaged.
I voice about all the love poems whose last rhymes were meek.
The love poems that were written, before the heartbreaks were bleak.
One-sided relationships that were never able to break free.
Begging for a chance or forgiveness when the other hadn’t let out a plea.
Let's not forget how love can be a battle.
With every blow to the heart, our flesh conceals the shrapnel.
All the truths that we do not mention.
While the trust we pursue stirs up tension.

How many times can you describe one’s features,
Before their image becomes a disfigured creature?
How many stars are you able to count?
Before your love’s time runs out?
How many lists in nature,
Could you continue to compare to and cater?
Haven’t you heard that love can be a beast?
You adore them even when they cheat.
Compiling faith within the unfaithfulness.
Trying to bring joy to deceitfulness.
Taking lust to their breast.
When do you think the lonely lovers get to rest?
Yearning just for comfort,
When their lover knows nothing of the sort.

If the love, that you were blinded by, took the form of a person, they would be disheveled.
Their voice would not able to be muffled.
Their patience would be brittle and tangled.
In hopes of reaping a relationship until mangled.
In the beginning, they might have shown up with a glow that sparkled.
But they’d leave your glittering valentines crumpled.
Throwing your longing in the trash.
Burning it into soot and ash.
Then watch as you are begging from the cracks.
Reminding you that there is nothing that they will take back.

Soul searchers can be companionate and unconditional.
But for some they are fictional.
Never to have known that being smitten could be functional.
Unrequited love is superficial.
I write from looking into the hearts of the beasts.
That have left you there broken at their feet.
Shedding a light on their narcissisms.
I’m sorry for bringing reality into your optimism.
But I do not write love poems.

© A. Tenney