Some how and in some way humans have convinced themselves that love it is the beat all, end all, of mortal happiness. This may indeed be true but We define our lives by how we are loved. Life without love is said to be meaningless and devoid of joy. However poets and minstrels have stolen the idea of love from its true place in this world and perverted it so intensely that the truth of love is lost. Poets with flowery words and song singers with drippingly sweet melodies have mislead the world for centuries. Poet and singers the masters of love, nay they are deceivers, the spawn of hell, hounds feeding on carrion decayed with maggots sent to destroy love and all that would fall for their false banners. Love should be recaptured from these hoards of robber pirates and announced to the world anew. Tear down the walls and paper façade and reveal the true nature of love.
Love is the blossom in spring that shines and shows a promise of new life.
No, love is not the spring. The blossom in spring lasts but a brief moment that is but an instant and then withers and dies on the vine.
Love is the warmth of a summer day basking and carefree, gleeful with the promise of youth. No, love is not the summer either, for youth is fleeting a drumbeat in our life not nearly long enough here before its sound and warmth are gone.
Love is the harvest and the light golden rust hues of autumn with the promise of fulfillment and prosperity. No, love lives not in autumn. It can not be found here either, for the light in autumn fades to quickly and death grips the earth.
To often the bouquets by the armfuls have fallen by the wayside. Vases filled with brackish water after a day or two. To often the drums of frolic have been muffled too quickly and the silence grown deafening. To often have the bountiful feasts gone uneaten and rotted. Caravans of treasures tossed carelessly to the heap with broken dreams and promises. Loves false prophets wave their banners atop these mounds grown higher and higher. The discarded heaps straggle with a putrid stench build up in over a millennium filled with lies and untruths.
Still lovers march under the banners of the poets and singers not heeding nor seeing broken treasures and crushed blooms. The sing song tales of love distract the eyes from the corpses and decay of all those lured by the lies of these minstrels of doom.
My own journey has led me along the same paths. I’ve flown the same banners of love. My eyes have been open finally and I see that the memories I have of love are all masks hiding the truth and the ugly, greedy faces of spring, summer and autumn. My ears deafened by the lies, which have hidden the selfish, needful and self-serving ways of each of the false paths. Weary and exhausted my journey has left me standing striped of my armor, battered and bruised, bleeding, nearing death and I’ve finally found the truth.
Love is cold and chill like winter. A barren and empty wasteland filled only with the sounds of footsteps across the frozen landscape. Easily lost within the sameness of the white that surrounds and blankets the ground, trees and air.
Winter makes no promise of blossoms that wither and die upon the vine and are forgotten. Winter makes no promise of warmth or youth that leaves all to quickly. Winter does not promise to feed us through to the next harvest nor deceive with golden lights, flowery blooms or the brightness of the sun all set to masking the truth that all life and all thing in it are fleeting.
For the true nature of love is cold and chill like winter. Love is icy and frozen, so cold that to grip it too firmly burns more so than any fire. Love is an empty tundra, windswept and clear, devoid of anything. There is no promise in love only crystalline whiteness and pure emptiness.
Winter hold me in your chilly grasp and lay your icy breast against me so I may feel the burning cold. Kiss me with your frozen lips so I may breathe you in and feel the knives of ice tear at my chest and smell your perfume in the crisp frosty air. Then as I exhale see the misty fog slip past my lips and from my body like my soul escaping, knowing that you were there within me. Let my hands fall in the long white cascades of your hair that flow around you like the swirling storms of snow falling silently.
Winter hold me in your pale arms and whisper close to me so that I may stare into the icy blue pools that are your eyes and see reflected back the nothing but white stillness that envelopes everything. And may I see that love is winter, cold and empty and only promises to bring nothing. Winter steal my heart from the thieves that have poisoned my sight and let the ice and cold within your arms encircle me and then walk with me across the plains hearing only our footsteps on the frozen earth. Then embrace the truth, the truth that love is winter cold and icy but fair and is a promise of only but what you bring to it and nothing more.
© 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007
