Love (First Draft)

Story: This is something I started writing… I can’t remember when. It isn’t finished for a few reasons: one of them being that it’s too long to slam so it needs to be cut, and another reason being that it just doesn’t feel complete. But, since I said I was working on the love poetry in my last post, I thought I’d share my progress thus far. I’m still not sure if the final result will be anything like this. I’m not even sure about the title. I really really like this poem, but I feel like I haven’t spent enough time getting to know it yet. We’re still in the early stages, ya know?

Love poetry has never been my specialty. As Tanya Davis pointed out recently during her feature at Capital Slam, it seems that it is only when we are heartbroken that love poetry flows most naturally. When we are actually in a loving relationship, it seems almost unnecessary to write of love. Doesn’t really make sense, but it sort of works that way for me. I didn’t want this piece to be like that. I didn’t want to write a love poem to anybody. I wanted to write a love poem to love itself. No more heartbroken laments of lost lovers. No more cheesy ballads for the women of dreams. No, just an ode to that which has made my life so worth living.

Love
by Loh El

Love

Lay me down on a garden bed
and plant my heart in the mind of the earth
when I am going to die
I want to remember
what it really meant to be alive
and love

I want to remember

Love

Lay me down on a garden bed
and sow the seeds of my discontent
my loneliness that they may grow
into beautiful trees of confidence
and wholeness

let not my mind speak of darkness
but in the dark observe silence
and meditate to find a way
back into your presence

Love

bring me to a place
where the scents are pregnant with hope
and the sounds carry your image
across sand dunes to the rivers of the amazon
from the oceans to the poles
show me the equator as your hip bone
and bathe me in your blood

Love

I remember all the ways in which I have been afraid of you
the same way we are sometimes afraid
of the men and women sitting in the streets
with their Timmie’s cups with the rims rolled up
begging for change

Love

it’s the kind of fear that sometimes makes you say
“YES! I DO HAVE CHANGE!
My pockets are FULL of change!
This is your lucky day!”

and when you remove your hands from your pockets
and they point at your empty palms and say
“What the fuck is this?”
you can reply “This is my heart!
This will change your life.”

It’s the kind of fear
that makes them curse your name
and quickly walk away

Fear

is not a paralysis so much as a willingness
to be less than our potential, less than our dreams
to witness our own greatness get squandered
in favour of the comfort of belonging and a well beaten path

And love?

Some days I feel
I couldn’t write a love poem to save my life
You deserve so much better than me
when I am anything else but free

If love were a warm blanket
I would be vomiting up spools of yarn
and if love were a belly full of food
I would be the reaper on the farm
but if fear is a cold night
I still shiver in this fragile frame
and if fear is pain,
hunger and a longing for affection
well sometimes
love is just the same

Love…

I have burned my own poems
to try to forget you
to try to forget the truth
that you can sting
you can kill
you can even torture

I know there are others in this world
who know love as murder
manipulation
power

There is a place in every heart
where mourning doves lament the night
and crickets, the approach of dawn

where birds await that time of day
that is made just for them to sing their song
or that time of night to hunt, right or wrong
we all have our time to shine
and our time to fall

Love

is not all puppy dogs and ice cream
it can often seem hopeless
we hold on to this idea
that separates love from work
but people we need to work on our love

Love

is not measured
by shared pleasures
so much as the endeavours
which we weather together

Love

is in the eye of the storm
it is in the rain
it is in us when we are born
it is where we all return to
just like the soil from which we came

Love

Lay me down on a garden bed
and plant my heart in the mind of the earth
when I am going to die
I want to remember
what it really meant to be alive
I want to remember…

you were so good to me
you spoke to me of love
as if your words were pregnant
with my tongue’s illegitimate child
proposed a marriage of minds
and I understood

Love

I understood
what it means to say
I love you
it’s a lot like I am you

I want to remember

Love

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