Agony of Self

June 11, 2021

Upon this golden bed
between the living and the dead
I ache knowing that the things I love
will eventually fade away.
Agony of Self Gesso Cocteau Digital Art

( I am the poet of the fallen world )

____ to write about love
is to live on this earth.

Once we stop loving
we no longer belong here
we drift into a dance
____ with death.

No one
likes to be reminded of their own mortality
it is a quick snap of the wild
a point of no return
____ the ‘not’ being.

It is the under-current ‘why’____
into the wonders of life.

____ it is the sadness of death,
the flowers turning burnt Sienna,
the poems that flow from impermanence
and the path that disappears.

Maybe not being here is more satisfying
than we can imagine,

____ to float where the migratory birds
fly, in the spirit of the stars, the moon
and the emptiness.

(Don’t we all know deep in our bloodstream)

____ intensity cannot be sustained
and we will always be hungry;
it is our appetites that keep us alive.

( In this moment )

I no longer see you everywhere
____ only glimpses from this distant field,

does losing someone change us ____
or do we forget the pain and rename it?

Always I remain
the beggar of words
laying here watching and waiting
for your crumbs, like stories
to fall so that I might live.

This is the agony of self ____

© Poem — Gesso Cocteau
From ‘Stranded Hearts and Other Sorrows’

(to be released in 2022)
Photo © Gesso Cocteau