Prompt 2 - The Unrequited Love Poem

Writing prompt 2, taken from http://thinkwritten.com/365-creative-writing-prompts/

2. The Unrequited love poem: How do you feel when you love someone who does not love you back?


Free writing.  As a poem.  I don't do poems.   Or unrequited love.

I've written a few poems in the past few years.  They haven't been good poems.  But they were poems.  Today I present another not good poem.

Maybe this year I'll start to write poems and learn something of the skills involved in such an art.  Maybe I'll read poetry too.  The classics of centuries old English literature.  Modern poets too.  Those I will meet and hear in workshops and performance spaces.  Those I will read in print.  Middle-class white British poets.  Working-class black Americans.  Learning from Milton and Blake.  Learning from the local writers.  Learning from Maya Angelou and Audre Lorde.

Maybe 2017 is a year to awaken poetry in myself.

I hope it's not also a year for unrequited love.  I was never good at dealing with an unrequited crush.  I don't want to think about what I'd put myself through with unrequited love.

Maybe only poetry would get me through it.  Poetry was my reaction to being called an abomination.  Perhaps it is a sound reaction.  Certainly more sound than the reaction from the woman below who lacks the ability to write.

I admit it.  This was not quite as free as yesterday's writing.  I've had to think about it.  All those lines of tetrameter.  Except for one of them which has a missing syllable.

I also admit it that the poem is not how I feel.  After reading it you will be pleased to know that.

If you could read it in my voice, with my intonation and at my exact performance speed that would be appreciated!

_________________

Twisted, twisted, twisted, twisted,
Burning stomach, heartbeat crazy.
I'm wrong, I'm wrong, I must be wrong,
To feel so much, to dream of her.

She breaks my soul each time she looks
at me, each time she turns away.
She knows I love, I told her so,
She laughed and said, "You don't mean that."

And yet I do, she fills my thoughts.
Desires can't be joked away.
My mind beats faster than my heart
My heart beats fast with no control.

She looks at me and sees a friend
A girl to meet but not to call.
She looks at me and holds my gaze
But won't consent to hold my hand.

Is there no way to stop this love?
No way to share my fire with her?
I cannot write or find a way,
To share this truth with honesty.


I scream, I want, but must repent.
Because of this I am not free.
Love's walls imprison me without
a hope that I will rest again.

Love's cruelty wounds. Love's evil scars.
Love is for me a crown from Hell.
In love there is no peace at all,
In love is death, In love my fall.

In love I am, in love I'll stay,
In love with pain's exquisite touch.
In love remain and she must know,
I'll find a way, and she will know.


And she will know, and she will turn,
And she will run, and she will fall,
Into my arms, in love also.
She must. Is there no other way?

Twisted, twisted, twisted, twisted.
My pain released because I know
that she will love and she will want
me. She must love, must give me love.

Twisted, twisted, twisted, twisted,
She will not look at me again
like that.  I'll make her gaze at me
And fix her smile and fix her hair.

And hold her close and will not care
That she is cold and she is quiet.
I love her still.  She'll love me too.
Her death is love forevermore.