"I had to pull off the road," he told me. "I was so excited, so happy. All at once, I realized that eventually, everyone I hated was going to die."
And i thought that our love would live forever
so i write a poem to wish it good-bye
and this paper will crumble, the words forgotten
the hard drive deleted, the Internet obsoleted
the electrons rendered inert
The institutions that bring you such power, such terror
won't be a footnote in an unremembered text
While the gods of your forefathers remain immortal as long as your fantasies stay naif
ah, but you were never a naif
still i believe you are holy
that the holy and the unholy die
that nothing that dies is unholy
and i believe you have power
to reach everything that's long since gone
to embrace what will happen tomorrow
and if these beliefs leave me grasping
for fantasies my mind will reject
i'll treat this wal-mart as something greater than myself
and pretend human failures can have historical context
If parts of our love are true
we are still both liars
as was every charming prince who sullied our dark names
and if Beauty is something real
we will still die ugly
finally forgetting our glory and our shame
So let us not pretend that mortal love is Holy
or that this blessing of our union makes it perfect
and let us not retreat into the fantasies we share
lest close attention reveal them as the little things they are
Darling, we have learned
of the wars within and without us
we know that victory is something none can justly claim
So let us learn to make love with the darkling plain;
It's the only love we have left
Jonathan Penton forged UnlikelyStories.org in the fires of Mount Doom, and into it poured his hatred, cruelty, and will to dominate. You can read some more deliberate misdirection at his bio page, or something barely more authentic at Jonathan.UnlikelyStories.org.