The Battle of Love

Love beckons yet repulses more.
Come hither, see your ugliness, beauty:
“Your gifts and your misses
see who you are through the eyes of your Lover,
see yourself here in His mirror.”
Falling in love: like a face plant in the mud.

When truly with a Lover’s heart
held to a higher level
seeing greater potential;
not permitting dawdling
in the lesser realms of oneself
Love demands growth into a better person.

To rise up dragons must be faced, slayed,
Light shined on darkness; all ugliness revealed.
Less than this is merely living fantasy;
To be in love with the idea of love, no skin in the game
A fruitless journey that keeps us all the same.

Love can lift us upon a wind,
Only when the dross is lost
traded in for something greater, bigger than one.
Love demands more of us
so few truly willing to pay the price
for who truly wants to shed one’s own skin?

So, I sit in the castle’s keep
waiting for my own heart, willingly to take that leap.
I look to the valley, where the apples are so sweet.
So much easier to just stay asleep.
For in my tower, I am complete in my power
untouchable yet lonely.

~~~

The Battle of Evermore calls to the epic internal struggle seen in The Lord of the Rings, where each character is an archetype for a part of each one of us; the good, the bad, the ugly. This song invaded my mind after my first draft of this poem. I fought against this song initially. Then in looking further, I saw the parallels and even altered the poem slightly to fit the song; not my m.o.

To fall in love is addicting, yet for love to last it requires that we lose ourselves to some degree.  Compromise is required, at the very least. The hardest thing, I believe, is seeing myself through the eyes of a Lover. To see myself, the best more than the worst, is a difficult pill to swallow.

When in the midst of love, I do not like the person I become. Usually confident, I fall into self-doubt and questioning of every-single-thing. The brightness dims. Can I truly be accepted for all of who I am? Where I do not accept myself comes to light. Where I have been rejected in the past, old wounds, all resurface.

So it is tempting to seek for love, to leave the tower to taste the apples of the valley. Yet the apples are perishable, they eventually give to rot. In my tower I am safe, yet it’s a lonely place. To leave, to be vulnerable is as to fall from grace. I lose my confidence. I must face where I do not trust. Then I am constantly questioning myself and wondering, is this truly the One? A Neo to my Trinity. To love is to get dirty.

Images: google