The Flower Of Love

The flower of love, ladies and gentlemen,

ripens into the fresh fruit and rotten fruit

of responsibility and argument unanswerable,

The gyves of jailers joint to prisoners, 

both uncertain who is which, 

tormented unto death.

Nor can we break the contract of Love

normally, for what is Love

if not need?— want in both senses:

Want of togetherness, lack and desire,

togetherness being with otherness bound

to the bitter end of self.

But were we ever once otherness?— No,

we were self, selfish, ourselves bested,

a couple of clear-seeing eyes, not four.

Yet we asked for it, because never

were we ever ourselves but cogs,

finally parts of The Machine.