Love Poem From a Practical Writer

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Love Poem From a Practical Writer

Dance like the picture won't be tagged. 

Love like you've never been unfriended. 

Tweet like nobody is following.

Live without depending, love without pretending, 

listen without defending, speak without offending.

Good luck with that. I can’t take my own advice.

Tweet like nobody is following,

great council, except I don’t tweet at all anymore,

after some billionaire ruined it for everybody,

so nobody is following me, save my sins and shadows.

Not really much of a dancer any more so I’m okay there,

I’m gray, and creaky, and unlikely to be out shaking it,

especially when I could be at home writing poems,

wrestling words, and staying off socials, so I’ll never

dance like the picture won’t be tagged.

Since our lives intersected, I learned I couldn’t 

live without depending, love without pretending,

it’s worth my peace of mind, but not worth losing you.

I am a part of my society and no burden on it,

but I am a castaway without you by my side.

Truth is totally free, but lies cost more than I’m willing to pay.

For the sake of what I thought was true I wasn’t able to

listen without defending, speak without offending.

You went your way and I had to find a new way, alone.

I wrote a thousand quatrains about your eyes. Burned them.

We are bound together, by the inherent magic of ideas, 

strung like pearls, sentences caressing the skin of our souls.

You still click on what I write, write thoughts for me to find,

but you forgot that I will live within you forever, my dear -

Love like you’ve never been unfriended.

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This Cascade poem shared for Open Link Night over at DVerse Poets

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©2024 Christopher Reilley 

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