A photograph of love.
Whatever the old camera captures of me,
shows a photograph of a lie.
That is not me.
Not all of me; just a shade.
Sometimes it’s my highest self,
full of virtue, could lead a nation of invalids up the Himalayas,
other times,
you’d be embarrassed to know him.
For all my charm,
they must either be stupid, or see a fixer-upper.
Nobody wants to fix myself more than I,
but I won’t let another do that for me. Not at all.
Some women,
fall in love with your first image more than anything else.
And when that image they fell in love with fades,
so does the ambition of their heart’s.
It’s a cruel, ghastly love.
The kind you wish you never picked up,
for it burns you, sticking to your flesh,
like globs of napalm.
You try to scrape it off,
because it’s the right thing to do,
but you only come up with fistfuls of your own flesh.
They don’t want the old wounds,
aching knees and dented helmets,
the thousand yard stare, as you grapple with your demons.
Blood spit, dripped from cracked outback lips,
from trying to make something out of this god forsaken life.
They don’t want the hard times,
the character defects…
They just want the smiles,
Echos of a laughter on a Sunday afternoon.
The musty smell of sex in the mornings,
followed by the hot breath — the kind you get, before you’ve brushed your teeth,
you both giggling at one another, somewhat shy.
Imagery, trickery and other games,
Frame the attraction towards me.
I can be condemned for existing,
Even the things that happened,
bagging I’m moving through, but too attached to let go.
They want it all, except the shadows of your soul.
Where the light doesn’t dare creep in.
Even though you allow it to exist in them,
and don’t dare to disturb it,
you co-exist peacefully, it’s not reciprocated.
This is why men blast themselves, flagellate wildly,
shackle themselves to their pain and go 12 rounds with it.
There is no belt given to them at the end.
Because the fight was futile.
This is the glorious image that cast on our struggles.
And of that, I’m guilty twicefold.