Legerdemain

                                (Image from Feritrad.org)

Love lost is the most exquisite pain.
A crushed heart bleeds worse than the reddest rose.
Tears are real but unbelieved.
Words are mocked for being slave to sentences.
Lies can pass for the truth as craft is refined.
Promises linger for as long as they are heard.
Lecture a loser and he wins.
It's all sleight of hand.

She Thinks of Me at Least Once a Year

(Image from merlinspath.files.wordpress.com)

She thinks of me at least once a year
She never was sure if it was love or fear
Undeserved emotion or mere empathy
For a creature rare as a quotamonee

She was young when we first met
I was seven years her senior
A big boy acting like junior
I swept her off her feet

Always tongue-tied
Heart in sleeve hogtied
13 marauders raided her heart
Her castle walls held rampart

But the gods were unwilling
Gave me no grace, muses unsmiling
Nyx sent her nocturnal hordes
Pushed me back to the sad overlord

Where messages vanish
In fields of dead bodies
Regret and thoughts of Hades
Deaf to words admonish

I write of nursery rhymes
When the finger of poesy
Is caught in cookie-jar mimes
Of middle-age fancy

Forgive my daring, light of Ley
Princess of my youth in fields of hay
I sing of bitter fruit hanging on dead branch
Melodies, words they work perchance