Love Lined With Lies Poem by gershon hepner

Your love was always lined with lies,
and now that it’s aborted
I’ll try to cut it down to size:
no longer long, I’ll short it.

With falsehood you have always spotted
our love; it’s died, and now
that I no longer am besotted,
I’ll take my final bow.

Your love with doubletalk is stained;
since on it I was keen;
this is the first time I’ve complained,
attempting to come clean.

Your love with half-truths was so false
it made me turn to drink,
now I prefer my single malts
to truths you love to shrink.

My words are now a barricade
against the lies you lined
your love with, trying to evade
the truth for which I pined.

Spring is in my heart no more,
and after fall comes frost,
for summer, like the days of yore
and love-lined lies, is lost.

Inspired by the opening soliloquy by a Poet, in “Killing Him: A Radio Play, ” by the Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai, translated by Adam Seelig and Hadar Makov-Hasson, and published in Poetry, July/August,2008:

Again like a rebellious nation my heart
Stands and cries: forward to the battle!
To the battle? Now? What’s a battle to an old man
Like me? O barricades of washed up words,
Stanzas filling books with my heart’s murmurs,
My love is line with lies and sweetened
With the sweetest white sugar. My thoughts are rusty,
My feelings but smoky furniture
And scraps of youthful rage gone by.
All this piled on the barricades.
But wither my flag, my withering flag?
Spring is in my heart again and winter in my eyes,
Fall in my arms and frost in my toes.
O desire, O vain rebellion,
What more….
[The voice fades into the background.]

6/27/08