Sestina on the subject of my own questionable heart
I’ve often said that I’m a fool for love
Blown on the changing winds of my own heart.
My secret is I don’t know what it means.
Hearts are muscles; love is fear and joy and
Hope. I’ve heard that it means sex. I like sex.
But I also like words, and tastes, and leaves.
I know that love’s still love when she- he- leaves.
It hurts now, but that doesn’t make it less love.
Love’s not forever, no more than it’s sex.
For all it lasts an instant in my heart
She’s real, and he’s real, and I am real and
We decide between us what love means.
And I decide for myself what it means.
I love cakes for sweetness and trees for leaves.
I love people for brave potential and
Cleverness and goodness and awe; I love
Them for skin and bones and beating heart
And for the trembling, wide-eyed shock of sex.
The three loves- for friends, for souls, and for sex
I have always tangled them up; it means
I can’t do what is expected; my heart
Basks in beauty like the sun dapples leaves
With no thought for who I’m supposed to love
Why have an OR and not an ampersand?
Why say that love needs rings and hands in hand?
Or say that sex needs love or love needs sex?
To me, trees and poetry feel like love.
It’s range and modes as much as means;
Bright and brilliant thoughts, writ on paper leaves
To thunder in the vastness of my heart.
It’s dangerous; I could break your heart
With my heady, wanton faithlessness; and
Still I don’t want to be the one who leaves.
I know I break all the rules of my sex.
Six verses cannot explain what love means
And I don’t know if I can truly love.
But if my heart’s unmoved by lust or sex,
I can still know transcendence and the means
To take our leaves from silence; to choose love.
On a whim, a friend wrote me a sestina about internet porn. Sort of. Because he knows I love the form, and because I half dared him to, and because he'd never written a sestina before. In answer, I wrote this.
Blown on the changing winds of my own heart.
My secret is I don’t know what it means.
Hearts are muscles; love is fear and joy and
Hope. I’ve heard that it means sex. I like sex.
But I also like words, and tastes, and leaves.
I know that love’s still love when she- he- leaves.
It hurts now, but that doesn’t make it less love.
Love’s not forever, no more than it’s sex.
For all it lasts an instant in my heart
She’s real, and he’s real, and I am real and
We decide between us what love means.
And I decide for myself what it means.
I love cakes for sweetness and trees for leaves.
I love people for brave potential and
Cleverness and goodness and awe; I love
Them for skin and bones and beating heart
And for the trembling, wide-eyed shock of sex.
The three loves- for friends, for souls, and for sex
I have always tangled them up; it means
I can’t do what is expected; my heart
Basks in beauty like the sun dapples leaves
With no thought for who I’m supposed to love
Why have an OR and not an ampersand?
Why say that love needs rings and hands in hand?
Or say that sex needs love or love needs sex?
To me, trees and poetry feel like love.
It’s range and modes as much as means;
Bright and brilliant thoughts, writ on paper leaves
To thunder in the vastness of my heart.
It’s dangerous; I could break your heart
With my heady, wanton faithlessness; and
Still I don’t want to be the one who leaves.
I know I break all the rules of my sex.
Six verses cannot explain what love means
And I don’t know if I can truly love.
But if my heart’s unmoved by lust or sex,
I can still know transcendence and the means
To take our leaves from silence; to choose love.
On a whim, a friend wrote me a sestina about internet porn. Sort of. Because he knows I love the form, and because I half dared him to, and because he'd never written a sestina before. In answer, I wrote this.