©2008 by Bruce Bennett
A Sequence of Villanelles on Love
Dialogue with You
Dead Words
Play
The Refusal
Mine for the Taking
That Prize
How It Has to Be
Against All Hope
If I've Learned Anything
What am I mourning? Not the loss of you
alone, a grief like death that I could bear,
but something deeper: absence everywhere.
No path. No plan. No soul to tell it to.
Dialogue with You
You're gone. There's nothing I can do.
I cannot reach you. I'm alone.
I have this dialogue with you.
I'm sad, I say. We talk it through.
Sometimes I think your heart's a stone.
I'm lost. There's nothing I can do.
It's worse than that. There's nothing new
to add to what's already known.
I have this dialogue with you
That's mainly me, just talking to
a phantom. I am on my own.
You're gone. There's nothing I can do,
Except continue with our few
remaining topics. Pressing on,
I have this dialogue with you
That's going nowhere, though it's true
I'll talk till you're completely gone.
Till then, what else is there to do?
I hold this dialogue with you.
Dead Words
The argument goes on inside my head.
You're gone, beyond the reach of touch or call;
as if you are, except you are not, dead.
I have to talk to you this way, instead
of talking; it's this way, or not at all.
The argument goes on inside my head;
Goes on and on. I follow where I'm led
and end up nowhere, up against a wall;
as if you are, except you are not, dead.
You might as well be. Everything that's said
's been said before, sad echoes in a hall.
The argument goes on inside my head,
And leads to this: a note that won't be read;
a futile message no one will recall:
as if you are, except you are not, dead.
As if there were, except there's not, a shred
of hope, I heap these dead words up, and scrawl.
The argument goes on inside my head.
As if you are, except you are not, dead.
Play
You played like no one I have ever known,
and when we were together I played too.
It's hard to play like that when you're alone.
Everything was a game. You'd tease; you'd moan.
I never was quite sure what you would do.
You played like no one I have ever known!
It used to be a contest on the phone;
I wasn't sure at times I'd make it through!
It's hard to play like that when you're alone,
And who would want to? When one's on one's own,
one knows the score, and games are seldom new.
You played like no one I have ever known,
Or ever will again. I wish I'd shown
more of my moves. I'm left now with the few
I still can master. Playing here alone,
Though play has lost its luster, I will hone
my skills, pretending I still play with you.
You played like no one I have ever known.
It's hard to play like that when one's alone.
The Refusal
"You could have had me." Agonized, I knew.
That would have been so easy. It was plain.
I had the choice, but didn't know what to do.
Your voice was hard and bitter. It was true,
and harder still to live all that again:
"You could have had me." Agonized, I knew,
There, on that threshold, there, with only you,
waiting, yet patient, nothing to explain,
I had the choice, but didn't know what to do.
I could, but did not, act, didn't follow through,
let all that go, left you confused, in pain.
"You could have had me." Agonized, I knew
What my refusal meant, and you did too.
I killed our love by choosing to abstain.
I had the choice, but didn't know what to do,
So let you give the coup de grace, a coup
you soon delivered. Now, your words remain:
"You could have had me." Agonized, I knew.
I had the choice, but didn't know what to do.
Mine for the Taking
Mine for the taking, yet I could not take.
The rest was chaos, sorrow, rage, despair.
Sometimes the nightmare starts when we awake.
The choice was mine, yet one I could not make.
You acquiesced, so lovely; you were there,
mine for the taking. Yet, I could not take
Action. I stopped there, paralyzed. The break
would be too much. Tragic. Beyond repair.
Sometimes the nightmare starts when we awake
And first see clearly how a small mistake,
some innocent word or gesture, leads to where
darkness entraps, engulfs. I could not take
That final step, nor save myself, nor shake
that nightmare off. It stripped, then held me bare,
helpless and hopeless, straining to awake,
Flailing to be set free, for sweet life's sake,
from what I couldn't acknowledge, or declare,
mine for the taking, which I could not take.
Sometimes the nightmare starts when we awake.
That Prize
We never got the chance to get it right.
I wonder often how we would have been.
That troubles me; it keeps me up at night.
My times with you were mostly a delight,
yet troubled too, as if they verged on sin.
We never had the chance to get it right:
To simply be together, not in flight
or hiding; laughing, loving, skin to skin.
That troubles me, and keeps me up at night.
I wanted the whole apple, not a bite;
the road and ride, not just a dizzy spin!
We never got the chance to get it right,
So don't know what it might have been. It might
have been disaster; failed romance again.
What troubles me and keeps me up at night,
Mostly, is the not knowing. It's that bright
promise denied, that prize we could not win.
We never got the chance to get it right.
That troubles me. It keeps me up at night.
How It Has to Be
The bald bare fact is, you're with him, not me.
Nothing can trump that; nothing make it right.
That's how it is now; how it has to be.
Try as I may to alter what I see,
that scene's unchanged; there is no hope in sight.
The cold hard fact is, you're with him, not me,
As days melt into weeks and seasons flee,
and you appear less frequently at night.
That's how the cards fell. How it has to be
Is how it is, I mutter, constantly
repeating like a charm, hoping it might
one day release me, She's with him, not me,
Though brooding does not change that. Fantasy
's no help. No sleight-of-hand has worked its sleight,
fixed how the cards fell, how it has to be,
As I still dwell on you obsessively,
return, relive, replay all this, in spite
of knowing you're with him, and not with me,
and that is how it is, and has to be.
Against All Hope
Against all hope, I hope to hear from you.
I don't want much; I only want a word.
Sometimes it's little things that get one through.
I'm doing fine. I know you want me to.
I've asked how you are, but I have not heard.
Against all hope, I hope to hear from you,
Just anything! Just something to renew
my simple hope such hope is not absurd.
Sometimes it's little things that get one through;
That make life livable. Although it's true
that nothing at all hopeful has occurred,
against all hope I hope to hear from you;
In fact, I count on that. Here's what I do:
I watch, and wait, and hope, and that is hard.
Sometimes those little things that get one through
Turn out to be too hopeless and too few.
How long, I wonder, can hope be deferred?
Against all hope, I hope to hear from you
even a word, one word, to get me through!
If I've Learned Anything
If I've learned anything, it should be this:
love's not a game, however one may play.
A kiss is something more than just a kiss.
However the appearance may be bliss,
don't trust that that is how it's going to stay:
if I've learned anything, it should be this.
And this, as well. (I might as well confess,
among the thousand things there are to say!)
A kiss is so much more than just a kiss
Because it has the power to curse or bless,
to make a life, or take a life away.
If I've learned anything, it should be this.
But have I learned that, since I seem to miss
the point of rules I can't seem to obey?
A kiss is something more than just a kiss,
A lesson I must learn again, I guess,
or suffer this again from day to day.
If I have learned one thing, it should be this:
a kiss is so much more than just a kiss!
I face the setting sun, and raise my glass.
The day is running down. This too shall pass,
and so shall night, and any course I take.
I toast the orange trail that gilds the lake.
" 'Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love,' quipped Rosalind in As You Like It. Still, those unfortunate in love feel as if they might die, and they know for a fact that they are indeed miserable," says Bruce Bennett, who has written many poems on this subject, a sampling of which are in two chapbooks, I Never Danced with Mary Beth and Coyote's Interlude with Little Miss Darling. Biographical information about Bruce Bennett and more of his work may be found at http://aurora.wells.edu/~brbennett/.