{67}

Still, the death of love has burnt holes in our lives, and it has burnt our lives whole. 

And I try and fill its ashen void with words, , , or inspired moments, enflamed in melodic hope.

Yet always, all honest endeavour is swept aside by the hopelessness of trying to overcome the primal need for love, trying to be above this;  desire for a lover.  Vain.  Aiming for the unmoving nirvana, a shield against the inevitable overwhelming desperation in my affection.  The Buddha told us to be free from the power of passion, for he knew its real ability to cause havoc in our lives - even destroy them completely with its maddening dictates.

The Buddha wished to have power over his life and destiny, and shunned the ways of weakness, , , and desire, , , but I am weak.  I feel that there is little I can do to buffer my fault:  this need for confirmation in the eyes of the other.

Though I sit in fullest ever control of my senses, feeling the desirous pull of the death of the solitary state, yet yielding not;  the power of such longing has not dissipated.  Rather as a river, it damns up huge volumes of wishes, and threatens to overflow, and flood my world with its soft and subtle hunger - devouring any semblance of warm contented permanence.  All bred in the name - of love.

Unconditional love.  What can such monster mean?  Do I then love thee when thou rip my heart to bleeding shreds?  What a recipe for prolonged pain!  Love gives us such delicate feelings of vulnerability, which somehow offer a sense of safeness.  And the more precarious the balance, the more ecstatic the moment.  The more we are robbed of power over our lives, the more powerful we feel, that some other person would love us so as to dedicate their time to guiding our actions.  And I crave that guidance.  Like a pseudo-parent, giving us the comfort of knowing that we are not in control, but that our lives are still directed.

Conditional love?  If I become fucked up, cannot keep my happiness alive - if I become angry with my life;  if I lose my senses, if I lose my cents, if I lose my censors?  Will love then leave me to drown in my own weakness?  And what if it is unconditional love which has left me so weak, so robbed of spirit?

Its a game as we play it, knowing that we can only ever lose;  knowing there is no way to ensure love returned.  We can only give and give, until all the wells of sadness are our only inner possessions.  Then from these dark pits we squeeze the last - impure moments of love, tainted with cheated desperation they become sentimental, nostalgic, , , melancholic -

And soon we become cynical, thinking that we have given all the love we have had, given unconditionally, without expecting a return - yet hoping for some golden drop to tantalise our tongue. 

Still we give, we give, we, , , give.

In desperate love, our lives of hope, , , we live.

And when we cannot love for all the greed that to us clings, then we listen to the silent commands of the Buddha.  And stand unmoving in the icy wind, our lives of love then, , , frozen -

Did we really give so much, or were we hungrily gobbling up each offered bit of warmth that came our way in return?  How do we give love?  Is not its giving then a cloak for our desire?  Or is it closer to believe that our wishes were just a clench of fear?  Need for power.  Is such feeling of love and need - the only way we can feel?  To simply give up trying, and plead in vain for death.  No escape, for we always can just die a little more.  Then let your heart bleed.  Then warmly, let thy soft heart, , , bleed -

Sails filled on wild emotions.  Can eyes ever sea past the skin?  We are always reaching out for touches of hope - dreamt with the comfort of possessed love - old age - caged dove or sacred tenderness.  Pray for the kiss of caress, from moment to moment, together with death we flirt suspended precariously between moments of suspense.  The taste of ice bites when the wind cuts my, , , skin -

Its strange how we survive moment to moment in this slow-decaying body.  Living our way from hope to hope, in a blind confusion as to what we're

seeking.  But life is simply unattainable.  Whenever we reach the rung we're aiming for, the next trepidation looms before us.  Yet sometimes we forget to move, and get contentedly caught in the present, thinking we have found what we've always sought.

But soon it will pass.

Those brief - paced - moments forgotten amongst the million steps we take between them.  And then we look back and wonder where we're going?  Or even ?why we're going? - if there is anywhere to actually get to;  and how do we know when we're there?  Does it never end?  Please don't let it end - I can't bare it any more!

For when the scariest steps stand before us;  then Angels majestic may yet still come and bare us, lofted.  Radiant with wings, way above tempestuous fate, , , for a moment’s lingering respite before we slide away into the void -

Meaning is void.  Reality is nothingness.  The screaming in the emptiness is the primal cry of birth.  Laughter blooms, haunting its vapid echoes.

{68}

The sounds that rise into being with each unfolding, embellished dream.  Ring true of wishes, hopes, and prayers.

Like promises they all hang in some precarious place between truth and lies, and make us into saints or rogues as the universe allows.

Or, , , the world may sweep over our dreams, ignoring their pleas for life and being - dealing them the cool hand of death.  Hoping that no-one has their half-formed wishes believed, too strongly, or they may be crushed beneath the smothering weight of dying dream.

Yet be not fooled by the vivid weight of visions, for though dreams may thus die, it never is for long, and some new re-invented hope may spring out from where those mumbled words, stutter, then lie.

And bare with them:  hoped-for images of half-embrace, tense treason of soiled grace.

They let us wear our dark embattled colours - well suited to the rough terrain where visions are created, and where useless hopes flutter down and smoulder, pretending they were never hoped for;  nor were they invested with clear drops of salted tears.  Here their pathetic mutterings lie about.  Still.  The worlds that could have been;  the songs that should have been borne by weightless seem, wither in a timeless shade.

As fleeting clouds, the future moves too quickly, actually, for any dream to really live.  For the world will unfold its own dictates.  And whatever joy we suffer, we can only hold it to our breathing beating chests, as it were an as yet unseen lover - or a fabric of creation that may yet bare its temptatious offerings.

Like when you're unsure if your cloud is a fierce dragon or noble horse - or just some white and promised moisture - puffing up the sky to rain - or part of some Divine-created course;  then let your sigh be one of hope as well as hopelessness for the two are joined as one throughout this world.

And, , , it is only when we kick our defeated way along the bits of dream-corpse, that such dark and fertile ground is found to spark some new untainted shoot of crystal smile - and fill our life with radiance and love, so clear and true, too ecstatic and serene, , ,  sublime for you -