This is not a poem bashing love, per se but is more of a poem dealing with trying to be a poet who is honestly in love, not just blusteringly in infatuation. When you have a serious crush on someone, when it hurts just to think about them, then you can easily turn that into poetry. When you are caught up in the myriad feelings that love brings, where everyday is about living a whole life together and there is something dark and wonderful in the middle, then it becomes hard to sum up. Unless you are willing to go sappy. One of the effects I am aiming for with this one is to start out sort of "stern", and then drift towards sappy, before the poem drops it rhyme, its meter and everything else for something a little more chaotic, summing up the stages of love in some ways. First comes the clearcut confusion that you sum up on the page. Then comes the sappy "this all makes sense". Then comes the real, unnameable confusion that you learn to live with and to cherish.
"The Problem with Love"
The problem with love is that it ruins all poetry Unless it be the angry love, the thrashing kind. Unless it shatters the heart, and breaks the mind. Unless it conquers the soul and weaves its frailty. The problem with love is that it saps your strength And makes you giggle like a fool, makes your stars And your moon get compared to the sun, makes scars Seem worthwhile, instead of a sign of your suffering. The problem with love is that it seals your lips, It kisses away your morning. It holds you up. It cups you. It paints you in broad strokes across the evening hue. It gives you something to do in the twilight, besides sip From a cup of warm, lonely coffee and wonder "What Is wrong with me, oh brother sky?" It ruins a perfectly Good sulk. It renders you quiet when you want loud, Spares no expense in getting rid of your miasmic thoughts. The problem with love is that it sneaks up on you, Makes fun of you, and holds your hands as you laugh, too. The problem with love is that it takes its time, Runs on its own rhyme, in its own now, its own whenever. It nods when you want anger. It cries when you least Expect it. It flies up, drops down. Screams like rain. Thunders And blunders and sleeps too late on that Saturday morning When you swear you had promised yourself that today, Of all days, you would get up and get something done-- Like excercise or some impromptu relearning of a language That two years worth of college never helped you to not forget-- But what the hell, maybe it is best for you just to sleep it in. The problem with love is it sits there like a stone washing Down the stream, it floats there like a reflection of a shadow. Writes you out in bold strokes, blues and greens and pinks And yellows and shale and black inks. It will not sit, itself. Clouds written into the willow sky. Nondistinct, though oaken, birds. The problem with love is that it is this, and that, and never quite Able to be put to words, it breaks the verse, all the while. The problem with love is it is that, and this, and quite Unable to be worded down, succinctly. It breaks the verse. Breathless. All the while.
This poem written by W. Doug Bolden.
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"The hidden is greater than the seen."
