Uncle George from ATL

Pleasure turns to the pain, / Of the lessons learned from the strain, / Of the questions burned in my brain, / About whether to love is humane / In its touch. / These thoughts are like salmon / Swimming upstream / In the tears of your deceit, / Fighting the current hurt / That kills more than is created / By the chaos of our intertwined emotions: / Chaotic because the anchor / Of Eros’ arrow has been plucked from the vessel / Of my undying infatuation. / Separation not as simple as the distance between us, / My mind no longer possessed / By the demons / That had been the overseers / Of my enslavement to your lies. / The seeds of these lies, / Rooted so deeply / They have cracked the foundation / Of what we once shared, / Allowing the faith in us I had sealed inside / To gush out like a river, / Ripping the image of our future together / From my thoughts / As violently and as brutally / As if it were a child being taken / From his mother’s arms. / I’m left surrounded in darkness, / But I refuse to be swallowed by it, / My loneliness like the night air. / Invisible to the eye, oblivious to the touch, / In its cold uncomfortableness. / Yet if I could do it all over again, / I’d do it in the same skin I’m in. / To lay down and let love die, / Just stay down and let love lie: / No, no, not I. / I’ll stay ‘round and let love fly, / Even though I have seen its darkest form, deceit. / Nothing else could taste this warm / Or feel this sweet.