The Limitations of Love

I am a drug-induced memory
Dissolving into a dull landscape
Pallid, ever more distant
From expressionist brush strokes,
Seducing you in the foreground.

The unequivocal truth:
He is in the space between us,
Showering you with riches
Proposing a lifestyle
That I can’t compete with.

The limitations of love:
Cardinal and crushing
For romantic poets
Who sketch one-third in flesh
Two-thirds in the abstract.

This pseudo-Freudian canvas —
The flat-surfaced, ostentatious
Lie that you tell yourself —
Will lead to long-lived loneliness
And corrupt your art as well.