quiet asterisk
Old Voice March 2023 4 min read

Stupid Love

Love is the only thing that makes sense when you’re not looking.
The moment you look, it’s a silhouette in a doorway.

.. sometimes, love can be stupid .. seeing a silhouette of a person, the mind wanders and conjures up a complete love story .. it does not even pause for a reason .. 

As I walked past the door
Her pretty frame was the only one visible
in the darkness of the early morning
The light behind making her radiant to glow

  • an excerpt from the poem [the flirt, aug 2010]

I used to think the stupidity would fade with age .. as far as I can tell, it doesn’t fade, it matures ..

eight years later, I wrote about an old man at a wedding who couldn’t stop looking at a girl many years younger than him, and who chased her anyway ..

Our eyes met for the first time at a wedding harbor
Me an old man and she many many years younger
Lust penetrated the gap as she blushed each time I walked past her
Under the dark night, I grabbed her, planting a kiss drawing her closer

  • an excerpt from the poem [the old man and the girl, aug 2018]

the old man is not a hero of that poem .. he’s a warning I wrote to myself ..

and when the chase has no one to chase, the obsession slowly turns into something heavier .. loneliness, sometimes depression .. a need that stays unfulfilled while everyone around seems full of awesome love and happy endings ..

A damsel called Loneliness
captivates me with her dark smile

I wrote that one at the earliest age of the lot, and it’s still the one that frightens me most .. loneliness can be a flirt too ..

then the heart runs out of people and moves on to nature .. it falls in love with the moon, with the rain ..

Shining brightly in crystal white
she wrapped her arms around me
looking directly into my eyes
she shook her head albeit with a smile
I have never danced this way before
seeing you super-high, I feel wimpy-low

even the British royal wedding managed to inspire one of my more inane pieces .. Annie Duke would call it a bad bet on a great story, and I’d have to agree ..

The cool droplets of water raining
Persuades the harsh sun to calm down finitely
Sensuously wrapping its arms around me
Shielding me from the solar glare sublimely

ah, the many forms of love .. and yet, as far as I can tell, none of them are quite real .. love is the feeling that gets generated inside you .. the silhouette, the girl on the train, the moon, the rain are only triggers .. Damasio might say the feeling comes first and we go looking for a face to put it on, and I hold that loosely, but it explains a lot about my notebooks ..

so here is where I’ve landed, for now .. if the feeling is mine, then maybe I don’t have to wait for someone to walk in and turn my life upside down ..

last month, I caught myself waving enthusiatically at someone who was clearly waving at the person behind me, and then I kept walking as though I’d meant to stretch ..

part 1, Love

part 2, Dark Love