May love always feel possible. And when it is no longer possible within a certain relationship, may you seek your heart elsewhere but never give up. These poems are about never giving up the romantic hope.
She’s out there. Like Rumi and his beloved. Often these poems are more to an imaginary lover than my hope for a single human who can fill all the qualities at once. But the illusion is mine. The romantic is boastful and brave. And the heart begins to stretch and ache again for love, for intoxication, for poetry.
Language is one of the ways I understand and release my feelings. Poetry tends to strip away the unnecessary structure from the raw images and craving.
I hunger. And the love I hunger for is just out of reach, even when a willing human is near. I strive. I grow. I express. And I will love again.
And with those kind words, I wrapped up my first collection of poems, post-fracture. It took me eight more years to publish these poems.
May love always feel possible.
I come back to this book today, as I am wayfinding again. Which way is up? What causes micro-tears in the new fabric I am weaving, threading, breathing into being? What’s my formula? What’s her desire? What is unfinished? What is meant for someone else? What is calm? What is excited? How is anxious like excited? Can I find or feel the difference? This is both exciting and new, relaxing and healing, and exuberant in imagining how well our interleaving is progressing in such a short time.
Language is one of the ways I understand and release my feelings.
Feelings are on the move upward. Desire, time management, resource management, reshaping desire into a dance rather than a demand or neediness or routine. I am out of my routine completely. That’s the idea. Let love shatter you ideas of love. Let love in by embracing the messy. There is no Big Love without messes and course corrections, navigational redirects, aims, enemies, and how we regather and find rest while in orbit around each other, and also a gentle tug of hope and faith while we are out of earshot, or eyeshot, or comms of any kind.
Alone, we must find love. We bring the lover into any relationship; each time, a brand new lover is me. Nothing I’ve planned or imagined has cojured you up. You arrived willingly. Open. With your own ball of blue yarn to untangle. Mine is purple. I can use some help. Untangling.
Looking back on this first book of poetry, published through Amazon, I hear good wisdom for my present self. My mind wanders. My journey continues through hits and misses. I get up, eventually, and dust myself off.
Today, I am well-dusted. I am happy enough to notice my imbalances. I am taking corrective action for my own body and passions. I am listening and adjusting to signals from my new north star.
That is enough.
You can find more of my writing at https://mcelhenney.net
This book is here: impossible love poems, love, loss, rebuilding, recovery, divorce, dating for love again
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the back cover of Impossible Love Poems, by john oakley mcelhenney
