Poetry by
Gregory McIntyre

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