I wanted to write love poems
and clearly I wasn’t the only one.
I wanted the neatly packaged version of love I’d heard so many times.
Word are plenty, though sometimes empty on the subject,
but some words cling to your soul just a bit longer.
These are the kinds of words that strike deeper, reach further.
Cornel West once said, “Never forget justice is what love looks like in public.”
Now, those words don’t distill love’s identity, but project it instead.
It’s simpler to obsess with just words of romanticism
and the pre-processed,
company-approved anecdotes
that are ready made to explain what justice looks like.
However— in public, the reality defies the trite sound bites that frequent our songs, news and history books.
Some say love is blindness, but no.
No, no, no, no…
Love is blinding clarity of consciousness you dare not ignore.
It is the awakening of a strength of emotion
you and I may fear to face in anticipation of the revolution it demands.
Stuff of daydreams solidifies and suffers in our presence,
but where do I turn my attention?
It is jarring to realize that blind passion is not enough…
Real love? Real love is work.
But that’s not the story we tell ourselves.
It’s too far from the tolerated narrative that dominates our ears.
We miss the intellect of love that embraces wholly and does not disregard circumstances
simply because we do not recognize them within ourselves.
I wanted words to paint images of the romantic run off into the sunset…
to capture the photogenic fists thrust into the air in protest…
the fleeting glance at opponents of injustice.
It lacks the other human sensations we might experience if we were more than fervent observers or acute documentarians.
Ears won’t hear the shuffling and dragging feet of any march,
nose cannot inhale the scent of sweat off of any body described in a poem,
and our tongues will not taste salt of tears nor the rank of blood.
for love is not a single moment. And the pursuit of justice is never final.
We want these so desperately up to the second they inconvenience us
they step out beyond our personal frame.
We will cheer on labeled heroes from the comfort of the cheap seats,
stay satisfied with cheap victories passed by those whom we dared not join in their moments of tribulation. Only the most refined of histories can we consume easily.
Where is passion when we sleep too deeply to light any fire,
let alone one large enough to draw the eyes of those too attached to the safety of their own comfort?
While we occupy institutions so occupied with protecting brands that they forget to live up to them,
this steady atrophy of empathy grows normalized so that we can hide from the title coward,
but live in cowardice nonetheless.
It is a willful, self-sedation that lets slip the agony of others from your mind…
and nothing but the thoughts administered to us may be heard over the echoing silence of inaction.
But…
BUT
If you love someone,
your head does not turn away
whether from suffering you don’t understand or from joy you have yet to grasp.
More than words of kindness, this world demands active compassion.
We hope to claim ownership over selflessness, but then cry out in cold shock when we shop for agape and realize it was never for sale.
Words are never enough, but they can be a beginning. Maybe a love poem is just reflection of the bits of us that have been shattered and remade by our own lives before taking up the search for emotional consciousness.
Renaissance of soul marks awakening of life
not fractured, at the expense of a history unacknowledged,
but whole.
Rooted deep.
Liberating.
I want to write love poems. I want to grasp love.
and some part of me feels what Dr. West meant when he told us,
“Justice is what love looks like in public.”
I want justice.
CarlyDreme 