Love Poem: Deserters
David Smalling Avatar
Written by: David Smalling

Deserters

I don't mind them leaving at all
It is their right 
To leave me like a floundering ship behind
We should not force a soul to do what's good for them
If it is only indirect harm to you
No matter how you think of it
You cannot get a better deal
A lighter ship is easier keel.

What absolutely gets to me
Enough to have someone walk the plank
Is not the sneaky break of rank
But the tarry gall to return
Finding that the other's hell does hotter burn.
I will giblet and rack the betrayal
Not for the fear that fouls the fickle will
But for the emptiness of promise in the self
And then to lie and lie
Causing me to be the captain of their distress.

What is it that brings them back
Once you hold a steady course?
Is it the silence of the sea,
The vast quiet of eternity?
Is it the illusion of our horizon,
The emptiness of space with speck of earth and sun?
What is it that brings them back?

O I know, I know, I know
It is the myth
The one mothers feed their daughters on
While preparing them to rear the world.
That hand rocks so many things
The cradle was the best part of it
For some 
Beauty makes insatiable the heart
And love is despised in gentleness.
O we were no good to be good
Let them court a prince to love the devil
I am tired of that trash
The needle of the scale promoted by cash.

My ship is empty now
Let it sail with dancing bow.