Fear of Love

Beyond the cusp of lost love
her softness invokes only grief,
each embrace like ready thistle
piercing an umbilical
between two hearts
circling fates destiny

Where once had I aspired
to dance in fields of swept green
have I to rather spoken death unto earth’s myrrh
for to summon a thousand chambers of hell
that vanquish dreams
like vapor into unseen air

What man and his primal faculty
unmakes a spoil of bitter wine
when his course leads him to himself
and a surety of drowning
he accepts to confront
of his own denied sensibility

I’ve coursed love’s periphery
as a dark line defining distance
lumbering like an arm-length leviathan
seeking to overturn near-sightedness
to stake a lover’s claim
as fool’s gold upon my lapel

I’ve called to empty spaces
committed to a calling
and scant wherewithal to boast
but for a next conquest
where gather the meek
to fathom such communion
and man less his rhythm
pining the chameleon
like a shapeshifter
obscuring Van Gogh’s final scene
into starry, starry blight