We who with songs beguile your pilgrimage / And swear that Beauty lives though lilies die, / We Poets of the proud old lineage / Who sing to find your hearts, we know not why ... (James Elroy Flecker)

11.7.25

Heartbreak


isn’t easier the next time

 

not a task you master,

a skill at which you improve –


no, it’s being stabbed repeatedly

with a sharp blade


each piercing as painful

as every other


every time





Form: textu


Written for Poets and Storytellers United's Friday Writings #185: Don't Be Afraid to Start Over, this was intended to contradict the prompt – but I now realise it's a misunderstanding of it, as starting over is not the same thing as repeating an experience with another of the same kind. However, as this is what the prompt inspired in me, so be it.




21 comments:

  1. And yet... one cannot be afraid to fall in love - again and again - and expect a different outcome!! Exactly on prompt, I think! :)

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  2. Yes, poking that scar sure feels doubly painful... Excellent poem, Rosemary!

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  3. We were inspired the same way it seems!

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  4. Most days I read your write before I go to.bed. Now I ve been looking for a song that I thought it was a Beatles song but isn't. Your poem made me think of it ". . . and I cried, I cried, cried. Closests were a lot, the lyrics to Ebie McFarland's "cry, cry (Till . . .) seems to me to be the closest fit responce that I found. She even had an old red Nissan pickup. Later a blue one also. (p.s. Also you've lived this by having two husband die. So did my mother-in-law, her say about marriage again was, "I've buried two husbannds and I can't afford to burry another.)

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    1. 'Grief,' some wise person has said, 'is the price we pay for love.' Despite the tone of this poem, I still think it worth the price,

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  5. Yes this love thing can be the pits.

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  6. I found the thrill of love addictive, so that despite the grief it continued to be pursued. But the last time I fell in love didn't feel so thrilling and exciting. It just felt right.

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  7. No matter your intent ~~~ this poem is short/sweet/potent.

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    1. Thank you! And yes, true, the prompts are only meant as (optional) guides after all, to inspire us in whatever way they do, even if that means subverting them.

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  8. Heartbreaks might have different sources, but they always hit hard, no matter how prepared we think we are.

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    1. But then, it's still 'better to have loved and lost ...'

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  9. "When to the heart of man was it ever less than a treason...to...accept the end of a love, or a season?" The alternative to losing a husband is dying before he does, so we might say that love *never* ends happily. Con suerte, it lasts long enough to be worth the pain of the end.

    PK

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  10. Some pain dulls, but never goes away. It makes loving difficult.

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    1. I think that is often all too true. For good or ill, I personally am always very ready to love. If pain comes, well, so be it. I think I have accepted it as the price (though I don't exactly embrace it).

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