FRAGMENTS 2002
A Poem for Taylor's Series of 62, by Tania in Berlin, December 2007.
FRAGMENTS OF LOVE
When overwhelming love begins to break
Into unexpected shadows, boxes and cracks
We run to hide in the everyday mass of feelings
The substances we know are protective, reassuring.
We
bathe in what we know to avoid love's lonely breaking Fragments are too
hard to bear once you know the vapid whole It is the love we aspire to
and seek in all its forms and pitiless colours
Love as a whole is the home we quickly return to when we have strayed.
Why does it harm you? Why do I know the injury caused
When love becomes fragmented, caving in under the weight
Of
its own intensity, longing and unending desire for the other The other
who I worship is not far from me or from my bothered soul
It is that other soul searching amongst the grizzly remains charcoaled
Fractured and chipped, being pieced together again as a sublime puzzle
Or
a mystery would be slowly wiped away into clarity and solid forms
Shapes and desires understood and measured to clear away the doubts
If love is subject to such tortured fragmentation why do we subject
Ourselves to this form of torture?
Why is it blissful to be in love? The bitter fragments really do speak for themselves, don't they?
We
are genetically programmed to fall into a sticky pit of love One that
is hard to wrench free from as we slip and slide back in
Down into a
seductive hole of comfort and solicitude, a home There we find
ourselves, our better selves, who had been there Waiting for us all
along, there in a cave shared by two people in love
Fragmentation is scary enough in these days of the global In these days of travelling before we have even left a place
Before we even know where we are, whether we've arrived
Is
yet to be determined by our television or our mobile phone If our
computer feels at home then we are by nature there too It is an age of
disparity and superficial welcome that we wanted
We spent another age to get to these places without our homes
And homes without a spiritual place to return to or crash into.
As the crashing becomes louder we hear the
glass breaking The awesome might of warships and planes and tanks on
sand That crash into homes and leave no place for the heart, or love We
are fractured beyond recognition, picking up the pieces again
The broken bits that we recognize as our former selves the silly ones
Who ventured from the cave and wandered out into a loveless world
To fall into a trap and snare a heart without thinking as love does not
Care to think about its fall, it is a crashing that leaves the mind behind
It is a delightful indulgent wafting of the senses above the mere body
The exaltation of the body into a form of pure pleasure and innocence
And openness to that other soul inviting them to come in and partake
Of the treasures buried deep beyond the everyday we tramp around in
Masking what the purring delights are folded into our ordinary being
Waiting to leap forth and run scattered in a delirium of joy and pleasure
We want to lie in this deep bed day and night if the world would let us
But it wakes us to life back from that spirit life it cannot bear for long
Love is the awakening we all dream about and long for
It is the stuff of movies, books, jokes and poems
We laugh at those falling into it and pity those out of it
It is a state of being that protects and makes you more Vulnerable than you care to be beyond babyhood
It is the paring back of all those protective layers to lay
Bare who you are or maybe wish to be for that person
For the world to see you through that other half for a time
It is the joining of souls in true love and the essence of life
We want to protect this state as much as ourselves in love
As we all fall and rise and pick ourselves up from the dust Knowing that the fragments can be borne and carried over
Into the next love, the next life, the next home that we share With the person we love, the partner of our lives in pleasure
END
