Deceptions Of Love

1.
I was deceived,
lead astray by Love.
It took me,
like a rose,
down
the Garden Path.
And like a rose,
its thorns
pricked my soul
as it bloomed.

2.
I was deceived,
lead astray
by expectations thought of
as Love is thought of
universally.
It took me in the infancy
of my youthful fancy,
and young Love,
like a rose,
blossomed temporarily.

3.
I was deceived,
lead astray by illusions,
reproached by misgivings
heaped upon me,
like dead petals,
silent in their falling,
slowly dying,
without decaying;
asking without acknowledging,
had Love been mislaid?

4.
I was deceived,
by sentimental cards,
representatives of Cupid’s darts;
by the electronic echo
of voices on phones;
by the expectations acquired
from the society of friends,
by the rituals of courtship,
though changing with time,
towering timelessly, sentinalion

5.
I was deceived,
lead astray into thinking
Love must be a Feeling,
the emotion of the moment,
elusive,
as emotions must be,
like waves,
always moving,
never in the same place,
gone even before their time.

6.
And I,
always feeling loath
to admit
that if not lost,
it must have been misplaced.
And I must not be found
disloyal;
and so I believed
Love must be
where it is wanted.

7.
For what is Love?
Is it a force beyond time?
Is it a desire for the object
of its affection
so strong
as to wish to embrace it
with a strength
to pull it inside
one’s very inmost being?
To become resolved, completely?

8.
Who would submit themselves
to such a love;
and who could achieve it?
Yet without it
how can Love’s charms
endure?
And if achieved,
how could one
survive a single day
when Love, objectless, is departed?

9.
If what we know
as Love, be true;
how is it possible
for one to love
again and again?
Or to love in multiples?
Do we deceive ourselves
that we love another,
and so constrain ourselves
to a whim?

10.
Can Love be true
if one must
submit to deceptions
demanded by convention
for it to endure?
Should not Love
be able to stand
on it’s own two feet
in the full light of day,
bedazzling in its ineffable glory?

11.
And so I resolved
not to be deceived
by Love so-called;
but to love truly,
controlled, but honestly;
by accepting myself
for what I am,
and loving others
for who they are
without artifice, without deception.

Tim LaFave’s questions:

1)  Does the reader have the sense of the poem? I was told during one reading that the poem “was not very romantic”.

2)  Does the reader have the sense of what the poem is trying to state about romance?

3)  The poem is constructed of eleven stanzas of ten line each. For the sake of art, I would like it to have ten stanzas of ten lines each, but I can’t decide which stanz to sacrifice. If the reader were to choose one stanza to leave out, which would it be, and why?

4)  I have introduced a neologism into the poem.It is intentional. Do not get out your dictionary, or spell-check; you won’t find it there. What is it, and what do you think it means?

Thank you,

Tim LaFave

Reply directly to the poet: fsf1425 (at) verizon (dot) net