One Great Love
Has anyone ever lost
the One Great Love
you were born to find,
staring into your beloved’s absent face
as he empties his pockets
and swears on his
own lost heart
it just ain’t
to be found?
Did anyone ever lose
their One Great Love
in the overgrown reflections
of all the faces of who you used to be
and particularly, who you used to submit to
and what you used to do to save yourself
from the vulnerability of
loving so utterly
and completely?
Did anyone ever forget
that your One Great Love
cannot be replaced
not in the endless gaze
of the lust that vanishes leaving no trace
or the promises of fate disguised as lovers
you were born to hate
and rue the day
you ever met?
Did anyone ever lose
your One Great Love
to the passage of fallibility
in the murky swamps where we hide
ourselves from love, laying low,
lower that you ever knew
you could stoop?
Did anyone ever lose
your One Great Love
not only to your own inadequacy
but also to his, as he hides from the pain
of loving someone so human and fallible
as you?
Did anyone ever lose
to your One Great Love
the avowed and consummated future
that cannot be dreamed nor undreamed
by a solitary heart
lying in tatters galaxies apart
in sheets that still carry
the testimony of your
truly sighted
destiny?
Has anyone ever searched
for the One Great Love
you were born to lose,
not only in the perfect remains of yesterday
but, more poignantly, in the beauty
of the future only you can see,
as he stares into emptiness,
that gaping gauge he’s carved
in place of the pain that
would have ravaged him
had he agreed to
let you in?
Has anyone ever fallen
so deeply to their knees
and searched so sincerely
amongst the debris of unwanted failings
in your own flawed, human personality
begging like a child for empathy
as he empties his pockets
and swears on his
own guttered heart
there is nothing
left to give?
Has anyone ever lost
their One Great Love
yet failed to give up
and danced the whole human night
until the dawn of death outside his door,
singing his name and
inviting him
to open up?
Has anyone ever lost the need
for their One Great Love
to love them back,
and more importantly,
has anyone ever found
anything more joyful
than being held right through
in the iridescent eight-limbed universe
of their One Great Love?
Has anyone ever found
a way to hold oneself at night
more tightly and sweetly than
your One Great Love, or found
your One Great Love eventually,
inside your own breast,
inside your own breath,
and learned to satisfy
your own great longing
to be recognized
and adored?
Did anyone ever lose
your One Great Love
right before take off
when the wheels disappeared,
the whole damn world you knew,
and you don’t even realize
you’re higher now
than you’ve
ever been?
Looking down on the ruin
of your One Great Love
with nothing left
to support you but empty space
that somehow seems mysteriously
to take you up and up
guttered and hollow
nothing left to do
but to fly
solo...