On Love and Loving (Jim)

Four Poems of Love and Loving
(From Youth to Long in the Tooth)

First loves, are well... ...they’re first loves....
....and you never get a second one....

Lying there
she must have bones
yet conforms
against me
as if melted.

We should be two –
yet in ths moment
so clearly
and purely one –
there is no me, no she
no moon no sun.

That was the apex.
And then came some of the troughs,
and you begin to cynically realize that....

Love’s too often like a
cheap steak house.
Big sizzle --
big fizzle.

Just another heapin’ helpin’
of emotional cholesterol.

But I have had enough of heart attacks –
and high calorie sweet empty nothings chow.
Oh yes, I’m on the love diet.
And so for me, it’s life’s salad bar for now.

Still, time passes,
and we try to move beyond love’s bipolar highs and lows,
and beyond cynicism to an...
...acceptance of some of life’s harder facts.....

My love o’ long ago
Sure, I love her still
(the guy she left me for
I’d still like ta’ kill).
I’ve been in love since then
I will be again –
‘n now sometimes I leave them
(I’ve learned it’s no sin)

So grizzled realism. yes.
But we NEVER grow immune,
and somewhere between mythical places
called “maturity” and “C’mon, those days are over,”
it happens again, with someone new
or someone you’ve been up and down with forever,
and you fall again...

....And you couldn’t get fooled again, right??

.....But, hey, even armed with hard-won experience,
you still better “Watch out for that first step!”...
I didn’t and.....

Love.
I fell in –
yes, still again –
and it was great –
but then – too late
I fell.

Fell into pits of
scalding steam
and from thence
to icy caldrons –

I fell
and fell
I screamed
and I fell
and burned and froze
and burned and fell
and fell and fell and fell –

‘til, well,

‘til –

I fell out.

Love.
Oh yeah.

Love.
You gotta... ...love love.

–Jim Keller
December 19, 2002
© 2005 J. Keller
All rights reserved. World Rights Reserved.