SamadhiMuse

Hours of laying on the couch
   with my thoughts turning like snakes.
Empty and aching - going over things
   again and again.

All of the ways of appealing to her again
   parading before me one by one.
And all of them now remembered to be failures - 
   none of them effective before
      though each cut me to the quick with memories.

And the final words.   I walk up to them again
   and again - and I turn away.
Every time, my heart says, "There must be something
   still to be said - before this."

She told me once that I had no idea how loyal she was
   and I built my life upon it, never doubting then.
But somewhere, 
   something fatal was lost.

I think it was when she decided
   that I was wrong and she was right.
Instead of seeing that we had a difference of opinion
   and that no one was right or wrong.

Loyalty was lost there.
   And I've come to see 
that her loyalty only meant,
   "Until we disagree and I decide you are wrong."

I think we could have worked through
   almost anything
if we both could have seen and accepted
   the others POV as genuine.

But, so many ugly things have been said.

"I don't want your shit here - ship it."
"I don't want you to come home every six months."
"I don't trust you."
"I am so angry with you, I don't know what to do."
"I couldn't stand for you to come back this summer."

I don't know, when I read these things,
   Why I would want to be with this woman.
But when I think about saying those final words,
   I turn away again and again
      in pain and confusion.

Where is that loyalty now?
   Am I the only one who feels
      what the end of forever means?

"If, my mind says, "If".
   "It's the end", my reason replies.
"If I tried one more time", my heart says....
   
"You have no idea how loyal I am."

gallagher
22 Feb 2010
christchurch

— Copyright 1965-2010 by Dennis Gallagher —

It's a thing that corrodes the soul
   when the person you love the most in the world
has decided that you are wrong
   and unforgivable.

I sit quietly with music playing in my headphones
   on a park bench
with the willow trees swaying
   and people and their dogs running and walking by.

A sort of peace fills me
   as the wind talks to my skin
and George Winston's music fills my mind
   but I'm empty and most of me is gone.

Corroded, bleached, driven down, hammered into absence.

I think, "What am I interested in?   What's different?"
   and nothing responds.
      The one with the passions has gone.

Having the one you love most in the world
   feel this way about you
breaks the mirror in which you have seen yourself
   and felt loved.

And then there is the empty silence and your stomach.

In the sky, an enormous cloud with shafts of sunlight pouring through it
   and a bird winging its way across the tableaux
      but my stomach says to fear everything.

It is good that I'm not an insecure person
   with deep self-esteem issues
or I would have crumbled before this
   corrosion and disdain long ago.

But, it's faded me
   and crawls about in my stomach
and leaves me without ambitions
   or dreams.

25Feb10
gallagher

— Copyright 1965-2010 by Dennis Gallagher —