*****

Recorded Reading (2:13): https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/qdl19q9zi4hxz37misa1r/Really-Love.mp3?rlkey=gxviu7g3tef6wln9qa4xslq9y&dl=0

*****

Really Love

Don’t numb out your feelings
Keep them on alert
Let love make you happy
And its opposite hurt

Let it make you angry
When some just don’t care
Rewarding all your loving gifts
With a superior air

Let yourself be outraged
The way we treat each other by ~
Do not let a friend continue
Inner schisms to deny

Forget that overused adage
On not taking it pers’nally
Oh, take it, brother, sister,
As pers’nal as can ever be!

True love is not, in face of its
Opposite number, all serene,
Or thrown out of the Temple
Had money changers never been!

It’ll get you trouble,
They will point and shout,
Probably accuse you,
Before they see you out,

Of having been the cause
Of your own dismal destiny —
Don’t let their mocking make you, friend,
As one of them, yourself, to be

They cannot understand
Why you won’t bargain up your soul
To keep your body housed
And stomach respectably full

In the eyes of those around
Whom you might easily despise
To whom you might, as soon as truth,
Be telling clever lies

Or gossiping about to others
Early, long and late,
Talkin’ ’bout those folks whom you
Dearly love to hate

Ignoring the potentials
In all of human history
To manifest one narrow band
Of possibility

Don’t listen when they tell you,
My deeply feeling friend,
That you your truly loving methods
In any small wise need amend

Do not with jaded cynicism
Fashionable flirt
Put back your heart upon your sleeve
And really love — get hurt!

*****

This poet presently lives at a fraction of her nation’s poverty level.

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