"I don't think that being a strong person is about ignoring your emotions and fighting your feelings. Putting on a brave face doesn't mean you're a brave person. That's why everybody in my life knows everything that I'm going through. I can't hide anything from them. People need to realise that being open isn't the same as being weak."

- Taylor Swift

Saturday, April 09, 2011

Do you think Venus ever felt like this?
I doubt it.
It is not what we do,
Or who we are,
But what they think that counts.

Do you think Cleopatra ever felt like this?
I doubt it.
It is not what we be,
Or who we meet,
But what they see that counts.

Do you ever think about how I feel about this?
We are one,
But we are better two.
Your God made
Adam for Eve
Her God made
Venus and Adonis
Their God made
Isis for Osiris
But my God
Forgot my other half.

What is it that they had that I have not?
Beauty is a fickle friend,
Fortune even worse,
What was once a charm,
Is now my barren curse.

It is a grand thing to be half of a whole,
Remembered throughout history
The rush of love,
The burn of passion...
The fable from fact
That never grows old.

But
Perhaps
It is better
Grander
To be just oneself.
Perhaps we could have remembered
Cleopatra without Antony
But we didn't.
That's the point.

And so no matter how grand
Or how great
Or how good or otherwise,
Loneliness seems my lover,
And death my life's plan.

1 comment:

Adelaide Dupont said...

"Loneliness seems my lover
and death my life's plan".

What two final lines!

And I liked the way you integrated the couples of history and of legend.

Cleopatra and Antony, at least, were powerful people, each on their own.

I continue to think of "I'm from Pluto".

"It is not what we be,
Or who we meet,
But what they see that counts."

And curses are charged with power, so "barren" may or may not work in that context.

Loneliness and death are in all our lives. We don't plan for them...