Love's Terror

" Life's greatest happiness is to be
convinced we are loved." Victor Hugo
(1802 - 1885), Les Miserables, 1862

Love is terror when it succeeds. You are not
sure of your steps. You fall and clutch whatever
conceits right you. Love is terror when it fails.

You are loved. You deny it. You say I cannot be
complete as I am not worth the coins I scattered.

I diminished joy and wasted creation. You don't
believe me when I say we live in a city of worship
that reveals pleasure's flaws with common fables
written with slight curls of haphazard truth. We screw
words down with a turn of our wrist to create night,
daylight's foster child, before we set vast fires
to guide love away from melancholy demons.

The bastards set up shop in spaces where we
plan failure by refusing to believe we are idols.

We shall become an icon drawn for mythology.
Our life record kept by scribes for lovers
when Someday returns as dangerous lies.

Dangerous Ride

Will she settle within my hands?

When I dream I anticipate her poems
as longing sets our lips to rise and fall.

We are never ordinary
lovers on the usual street.

She knows I worry. She can hear
my footsteps, equally paced, not
measured but thrown her way,
caught to discover anticipated rest.

We open exits driven from storms.
There is the illusion of quiet
when harmony is clean in hands.

We are dangerous rides
with unpredictable ends.
No doors can close while
the underworld sleeps.