Beyond Fears and Tears: An Example of a Love Poem

Poems are cathartic, an avenue to alleviate the fears surrounding love when hurt may have built up in your life. Whether you are are the reader or the poet, sometimes it's about leaving behind the fears you have built up in your mind. What happens when it is just too overwhelming to be ignored? What do you do? How do you escape the pain or express the joy? Poetry is the perfect platform for expressing a myriad of emotions, no matter the emotion; fear or joy, sadness or horror, adulation or hatred.

Poetry is from the gut, whether it is dramatic poem extolling the victories of war, a love poem about unrequited love, or a poem about depression, sorrow and longing. Poetry is both the escape and the captor.

The following is a simple expression of what happens if love becomes sour and is not returned.

Are you destined to wallow in a lake of fears

All the while facing a wall of tears

That threaten to overwhelm -

To drag you to its darkest realm?

Lose your dreams, bit by bit,

And abandon yourself to drowning in an endless pit,

Swept into a blurred vortex of sedition,

One made complicated by abject contrition.

You are surrounded by darkest of hearts

So cold, love has not even a chance to start.

How can you - why should you - reach out?

Is falling in love a task left only for the most devout?

Can you ever hope to scale

Love in the face of such coldness that it leaves you spent and pale?

Yet, when you look in his eyes you know

Never to abandon love's quest, no, let yourself fall deeper, pulled by the strongest undertow.

© Cynthia Turner 2013.