This Is Not A Love Poem
by lena

In my time, I have read one too many romance novels.
They spin pretty little webs and then draw us in,
As they sit and pluck the strings, tangle with our psyches,
Take the lead in a whirlwind waltz of the wonderdays of yesterday,
Lead us on some sort of modern chase wherein the woman
May or may not have more balls than the man.
A woman with a name like Honoria and a halo like angels will meet a man
Named for some conqueror or man-of-action of old, something noble like Abraham or
Manly like Hunter or romantic like Byron—how, with names such as these,
Could it ever not work out? And I think of changing my name—
Something erotic to match an exotic locale like The Heat of Heaven, and I think—
This literary mirror is a mirror of desire, a phantasm reflected from
Some world that simply does not exist, not anymore.

Only those outdated folk read romance novels and reflect upon an era
Wherein all these mystical, magical things can and do happen.
Not today. Not even yesterday. Now we read Time Magazine
On our way to work and we read our e-mail and we read horoscopes
And in between these pages those things can no longer be.
In this world of skies that scrape and ramps for acceleration and deceleration,
Get-on get-off get-somewhere signs, where things are lined up perfectly
And the horizon has teeth, there is no room for those musty pages.
Ask a feminist if a woman still needs that hero.
Ask a lesbian if she reads this trash, ask me why I read it;
Perhaps it is the sentimentality of a world slower than this one,
Where the woman always gets her (wo)man and there is no middle ground
To stumble over, tumble over headfirst, because the road to that sunset is Paved In Love,
And love never trips you up, spits you out half-chewed and begging for more.

They deceive us, sparkle at us with faded glamour from trashy shelves in discount stores,
Titles penned with a flourish by names like Honoria Hunter,
Something equally dreamy and misleading like the covers of those books themselves—
A feminine head thrown back, neck exposed and back arched,
Strong male muscles gleaming from some invisible sun,
Eyes wide shut or staring at you hungrily.
Happily ever after belongs up on the discount store shelf, right beside
In Your Arms Forever and Passionate Embraces and titles that make me squirm.
So how can I go on with what these books have poisoned me with?
How can I survive the drive down the interstate, how can I survive the 9 to 5,
Make it out alive from a life sadly lacking in the lurid?
My notion of love is permanently altered, had been altered from
My tender ages, still so impressionable, when I greedily ate of Passionfruit in Paradise
And nibbled the succulent Delicacies of the Heart.

So somewhere between The Love and the Lies, The Passion and the Fury,
I have come to a realization that to love you, I have to rid myself the old-world,
Old-romance idea of a love that lasts forever,
Give up that old innocence, learned in the wet-wild pages of the trashiest
Turn-out the literary world has ever produced,
Because that world no longer exists.
Moonlight is ephemeral; it always gives way to the awakening light of day.
Candlelight will not get you through the dark; dethorning the roses
Cuts into the local cable network’s primetime hour.
To love you neck-bared, back-arched, gleaming from some invisible sun,
Some word-coil sticking us together, with observers like these modern people-buildings,
Eyes like thirtieth story windows, hands like barricaded doors, could unglue me.
To feel that much emotion, pages enough to fill a novel if I wrote of it, could undo me.
To love you with the knowledge that I might someday lose you could break me.
To love you and accept that knowledge could make me.