To Think About Love

Love, mush, just gushing
when you were ten,
wasting all that love
on booger-nosed boys
trading baseball cards…

Crushes, swoony crushes
when you were eleven,
wasted on potty-mouthed boys
impressing one another
with skateboard tricks…

A wide-eyed nymph
oozing with beauty
delirious at age twelve
affections wasted on greasy-haired boys
with knuckles bleeding
modifying their dirt bikes…

A blossoming, blooming angel
at age thirteen
budding charm and grace
wasted on B.O. reeking jocks
more concerned with sports glory
and intimidating biceps
that conquer, rather than love…

A breathtaking
fair-skinned apple
of your father’s eye
at age fourteen,
wasting your time
trying to woo boys
whose social skills are gleaned
from MAD magazine…

Hormone-possessed dervish
at age fifteen
love completely wasted
as filthy old men
and perverse young hoods
make vulgar passes
in your direction
hoping for a breakdown,
relying on your weakness,
foolishness,
and isolation…

Experience gained
by age sixteen
learning the power,
the absolute necessity
of the word “no”,
usually in the form of,
“Stand back, you brainless scumbag,
before I put my foot through your gonads.”

Heart tried and torn,
exploded and scarred
by age seventeen,
love wasted time and time again
yet mother nature pushes you back into the fray
for more…

Finally, an adult
at age eighteen
more or less,
too old for the molesters
too young for the more eligible bachelors,
and it's off to college you go
to become independent
so you won't have to surrender
to some abusive dipshit…

Agh! Boys, gorgeous boys,
everywhere
at age nineteen
in the coed dorms,
in the cafes at night;
heart and mind cannot stand it,
if you don’t get someone,
anyone, to love you,
you will go up in a mushroom cloud…

Love, so much wasted love now,
though you’re becoming more sophisticated
and particular at age twenty,
growing out of your juvenile pop-culture years,
seeking for something more refined,
slightly more stable,
a bit less self-mutilating and destructive…

Age twenty-one,
you would be a spinster
in any other culture or period of history,
today, your life is still just beginning…

Your friends had found love,
had children, lost love,
and are now welfare cases
working miserable, menial jobs,
shunned by family,
shorn from friends;
you don’t know how you made it this far,
to age twenty-two, undamaged…

You’ve begun a career now,
age twenty-three,
love seems like a low priority,
yet you tolerate advances,
even say yes to dates,
though you have ulterior motives…

You’ve begun to taste power
at age twenty-four
in the workplace,
it feels good,
and it doesn’t tear your heart apart
like love did…

You have a front office
at age twenty-five
a fine view overlooking Park Avenue,
your face alone wields power,
and you know you have so many more weapons
in reserve,
men fear you…

You are the jewel of your family
at age twenty-six,
a successful businesswoman
with a chic mailing address
in the Big Apple,
you tower above all those crushes
you spent so much unrequited love on
back in grade school…

Men seem smaller and smaller
as your position becomes larger and larger
at age twenty-seven;
instead of Daddy's Princess,
you have grown into a full-fledged Queen;
yet you wonder about childbearing,
being tied down to family,
about what man will be your future,
so many dreams;
but there is no need to rush
in that direction
just yet…

You see your first wrinkle
at age twenty-eight,
panic sets in;
you begin to envy the skin
of fifteen year old's
and wonder why they aren’t scooped up
by twenty-eight year old man/boys…
oh yes, the pervert stigma nowadays…

At age twenty-nine
your heart settles down again,
yet you lost a promotion or two
as you were dizzy with the indecision's
of life and love…

At age thirty
men in their twenties
seen like narcissistic boys in their teens,
you wonder how you could have misplaced
so much love
on them…

At age thirty one
you’ve amassed a small fortune,
and a quieter life becomes attractive,
you are somewhat relieved
that you did not give in
to any of the fast-talking predators
that have tried to ensnare you…

At age thirty-two
you become so desperate to find someone
you become part of the club scene,
which only brings the disappointment
that you knew would be in abundance
in such shallow seas…

At age thirty-three
you’ve just about given up on love,
marriage begins to seem more
like a practical decision
of convenience…

You’ve thrown in the towel
at age thirty-four,
fulfillment in life will elude you,
you conclude,
and just as you look away from love…

it finds you.

You consider how lucky you are
at age sixty five,
reflecting on a life
that found a love
that did not die,
which served as an enduring foundation;
you know all too well now
how rare that is,
and you can only weep
for the vast majority of humanity...

you endeavor become a poet
at age seventy
to show the world how to find love,
how to feel it,
to prepare them for it, to arm them with it,
to enable them to find it
if not create it,
to share it, to spread it,
and how, when it is within their grasp,
to accept it, to treat it,
how to keep it alive
without suffocating it, without destroying it,
without helplessly watching it
slip through their fingers…

which means, you deem,
just letting it go where it will go,
letting it do what it will do,
letting it be what it will be...

and so you write,
and write, and write,
delving into love
from a guy's point of view,
and you find that guys
are forever trying to figure out the psyches of girls
before they dare approach them,
which many times is found to be futile...

which makes you wrestle with the philosophical question
of brain vs. heart...

you conclude that if both could only accept the general rule
that girls feel and guys think
and that never the two shall meet
on the same psychic plane,
then maybe the whole endeavor of love
would not be such a brutal trial,
and would not resort to, be reduced to,
and be controlled by
screaming, blind primal urges
where the completely brainless (and usually heartless)
have a great advantage...

but, you conclude,
such is how the species perpetuates itself,
as long as the universe remains human-friendly,
where brains are not important
to the perpetuation of the species...

and yet, you conclude,
since the universe is not human-friendly,
we cannot escape the brain vs. heart issue,
and you cannot quite put the answers into words...

as a result, since nobody understood your book,
you conclude that life is much easier to live
if lived by the heart rather than by the mind,
and the love will, for the foreseeable future,
remain in the realm of the brainless,
and that, in the present world,
it is fruitless
to think about love.