cover image courtesy of sera song / from The Tale of Sera Leigh
Impossible Love Poems
Why impossible?
When my marriage broke in half I never imagined I would recover. I certainly never imagined I’d have LOVE back in my life. Ever. Thus is the color of a poets depression and feelings of loss. But the love and the poetry wouldn’t be suppressed. And after a while, something started happening: love poems arrived in my life again. Long before an opportunity to actually feel love again, the idea of love, the longing for love and touch, reasserted itself as a priority in my life. These groupings of poems come from that period of healing as you will see in the titles.
May love always feel possible. And when it is no longer possible within a certain relationship, may you seek your heart elsewhere, but never give up. These poems are about never giving up the romantic hope.
She’s out there. Like Rumi and his beloved. Often these poems are more to an imaginary lover rather than my hope for a single human who can fill all the qualities at once. But the illusion is mine. The romantic is boastful and brave. And the heart begins to stretch and ache again for love, for intoxication, for poetry.
Language is one of the ways I understand and release my feelings. And poetry tends to strip away the unnecessary structure from the raw images and craving.
I hunger. And the love I hunger for is often just out of reach, even when a willing human is near. I strive. I grow. I express. And I will love again.
John McElhenney
5-16-14
Why does love elude accurate descriptions? Why is love perhaps the most sought after ghost and the song most sung by those of us who feel?
And the love letter too. So sad that such delicate work is not more widely shared. Often the masterpiece of passion and longing is shared by only two. Is it the privacy that makes it special. Is it the voyeurism that makes them so tasty to read?
Putting love, or our fleeting attempts to capture love, is a grand tradition. I am doing nothing unique or especially different. Of course, my word stream for it will be different from yours. Do you let yours out? If you gave expression to a love poem, right now, what would that sound that ringing of letters tell about your feelings.
Each love poem is a measure of the heart. Often those measurements and mappings are colored by the day’s events. Occasionally they are triggered by a smell, a memory, a glimpse of a photograph that held a tiny sliver of magic.
If we open up our own hearts, opening the veins a little, and let the expressions tumble out, even just for ourselves, we become more familiar with the soundings of our hearts. And as we get more comfortable with the process an amazing thing begins to happen. There is more love.
As we pay attention to certain things they become more important in our lives. And what is more important than love?
Word by word I try to get down something of my longing, quickly, unedited, and with the full force of my feelings. As best I can. But there are many things in the way of a love poem. Chores. Money requirements and thus work. Sadness. (Though finding a voice for the sadness is a way to release what might be underneath, longing for love.)
And poetry is not for everyone. Perhaps a clearly written love letter would be more to the point.
However for me, there is great freedom in allowing my heart and linguistic brain to try to hook up for a moment. Bypassing the editorial board for a minute, I occasionally achieve a satisfying result. But even the bad poems have a purpose. Even writing a poor love letter is better than not expressing that love at all.
Something about letting the expression out of your heart, through your words and sounds and letters on a page, that gives room for more. Each love poem inspires the next. And if you can nurture that “lover’s voice” wouldn’t you rather be speaking in tongues, than writing up another to-do list?
Each. Poem. Has. Value.
And if you write love poems or love letters, focusing on LOVE is a powerful medicine. And the transformation takes place without any effort once you let the flow start. Your heart and language begin to connect more frequently. You see things as LOVE again. You observe love or lack of love in the world, but rather than squelch it off you give voice to your feelings on the subject. It’s a process of opening yourself again to love and loving.
And of course, love is dangerous. If I let myself fall into a poetic trance and forget to pick up my child from school, there are consequences. If I muse for the entire afternoon without getting my work for money done, I’m not serving my life very well.
So love poems have to be tucked into our lives where ever and when ever we can find the impulse. There are so many distractions and requirements that would rather us not pay attention to our hearts, our impulses towards beauty. But with each turning back towards the heart, with each sounding out of a poem of desire, we strengthen that voice in our lives.
