Poem: Love anyway

Love anyway

You stand there like a clown in a spotlight without a broom
because you love her
more than you can say,
more than you have ever loved anyone else,
more than anyone has ever loved anyone else,
and she does not love you

She loves him
and he has no poetry in his soul

But love her anyway
even if she will never love you

Because the opposite of love is not hate
the opposite of love is not indifference
the opposite of love is resentment
bitterness and anger for being denied that which you know you deserve
that which is given freely to one so undeserving

Love becomes you in a way resentment does not
love is not the answer
love isn't even the question
love simply is

Love her anyway
because you love her
and whether she loves you or not
or continues to love him
him, the one with no poetry in his soul.
you will have loved greatly and grandly and without hope of reward
and the universe will have become a better place for it

So take off the greasepaint
and the shabby hat
forget the broom
step out of the spotlight
put aside the resentment
and love her anyway


This is the fifth version (at least) of this poem. I first read it on January 31, 2014 at the Kick Out the Bottom poetry reading at Embassy Vinyl in Scranton (just a few hours after a major rewrite at work over lunch) and then presented it again on February 20, 2014 at the Third Thursday Open Mic Poetry Night at the Vintage in Scranton, with the line "the opposite of love is not apathy" changed to "the opposite of love is not indifference."

As with most of my poems, this came from several sources. I originally came up with the line "I love you and you love him and he has no poetry in his soul" back in November of 2013, but didn't take it anywhere. In early January I tried to come up with the saddest image I could think of that could be used as the basis of a poem, and I thought of the old Emmett Kelly Jr. "sweeping up the spotlight" routine. For those who don't know, Emmett Kelly Jr. was a very famous hobo clown back in the 1970's who would end his performances with a bit in which he used a broom to sweep up the spotlight. Sometimes this was played for laughs, as he would chase multiple spotlights across the stage as they grew and shrank, appeared and disappeared. But sometimes this was played for pure pathos: he would sweep at the edges of the spotlight, making it smaller and smaller, until it finally disappeared and the show was over. This made me cry when I was a kid. How much sadder, I thought, if he went out to do this routine and realized he had forgotten his broom?

So I pictured a pathetic, lovelorn sap, standing there broken-hearted, hoping to garner some sympathy for his plight, realizing he had screwed up his opportunity to do this and just looked like even more of a fool.

Good, good. But where was this going? What did I want to say?

Poems in the "Waaah, my heart is broken, life sucks" genre are a dime a dozen. Less than that: go to most poetry open mics and you won't even have to pay a dime to hear numerous poems with this same message. If every person who ever had their heart broken gave in to misery and despair and just curled up and died, the human race would be in immediate danger of extinction. But most people get over it. The pain dulls, they move on, maybe they find some sort of happiness with someone else. Well, hooray for that, but was that really what I wanted to say? "Ehhh, you'll get over it?"

No. I realized I had something else to say. If you really love somebody - love them on a level beyond just wanting to get laid, beyond infatuation or lust, but really love them - then it almost doesn't matter if they love you in return. Your feelings for them aren't conditioned on reciprocation. Your love exists on a level the best word for which would be Platonic - if that word were not already being used to refer to another type of relationship entirely. And this is dangerous territory, because it sounds like its delusional, or steeped in denial, or simply stalker-ish. But it isn't intended as any of these things. The message is simply: if you truly love someone and they don't love you in return, you love them anyway - and go on with your life. Don't wallow in darkness and misery and despair, writing bad poetry about how your suffering is beyond anything anyone else can understand. Love them anyway, and get on with it. 

And so I wrote this.