The Sweet Breaking
Ticking clocks Pensive stares Soft furnishings Stale airs Kind dead eyes Enquiring flatly, How would you define love exactly?
Latin roots Desire and care (He strokes his whitening beard and stares) Proto-Indo-European Germanic high and old affection
He wrinkles his grey etymology, Assails my senses with dusty tweed And bookish curiosity
Well fuck, I say nervously Quite a lot of things let’s see
Far away right now I can see A girl’s fingers busy fumbling and numbing With a boy’s belt buckle Their hearts are drumming Simpatico lust curated by longing Lust is love, or love is something
Elsewhere presently I see A drunken shape slowly stumbling Down a midnight garden path To a lonely light bulb out the back And a note bearing a biro heart In love, stationary plays a part
Somewhere out there I envision A couple in a sunbeam fools For an hour In a tower of pillows Doing nothing much But killing a deadline And repelling an invading to do list Although nobody expressly said it Love is procrastination, a bit
Oh, now my mind is resplendent With a child’s delight Jumping and jiving in bedtime twilight Waving sparklers and coloured lights Objects the extemporaneous girl might receive From some fatherly figure in on the ploy To elicit in her this bursting-with-joy Love is his face weathered and kind Love is her dazzling, smazzling smile
You asked me to define what I meant by love And I had a faltering go But fellow, old man, dear therapist, There are more definitions than you or I know