Love hurts.
There is an anguish in my breast
the flutterings of doom
I transcend,
I elevate...
... into nothingness
and then dissolve
dissipate
the effervescence of my body already fading in love’s mortal grip.

O! horror that is to love,
O wretched anxiety
It is a gnarled beast
Gnawing upon my light
ripping me limb from limb
dominating, possessing
Lo-- I am Africa!
Dominating, possessing
such that I am no longer my own person.
We rise in revolt
But dominated, still is a thing possessed... unfree
O liberation!
Dominating and possessing such that I am no longer my own person
And all that I am is fast fading.

It lifts me up
From the squalor
That is everyday
experience
And thrusts me into a whole new realm—
—A magical realm!
Where possibilities abound!

But my feet... they refuse to relinquish their grip on the simplicity and mediocrity that categorizes everyday life. I am compelled to reason and logic to anchor myself to the concrete, not the whimsical or the faerie, but the solid, not the fantastic, but the grim, the groundedness, the oppressiveness and the cruel heat of the world.

I must remain.
I must not abandon my post.
It is required of me...
...to watch..
...to keep watch...
vigilant on the watchtower of life.

Leave the lighthouse for the Dreamers!
For Us there is duty to do
And I must not abandon my post, here or ever after.
Or risk the wrath of the Eternal.

And yet
Love’s
vice-like grip
entraps me.
Rips at the very sinews
of my feet
that grounds me to my familiar,

wrenches
me loose,
And flings me,
uncaring,
into the timelessness that is night,

where I must start and flail.

For none will catch me when I fall.

And fall I will.

For Love throws back her ugly head.

And with eyes malicious.

Dipped in others’ misery.

Laughs malignant in vicious delight.
Her rose-red lips and crimson fangs.
Glistening sternly in the moonlight.