The Poverty of Love

It was tawdry now,
And it felt ugly, this pretence
Borne of loneliness and age,
Inhaling them into the brown lung
Of its dislocation, where facing reality
Was becoming both a demand
Of experience and wisdom,
And also a terrifying encounter
With the evaporation of time
And people and words.
It was this morass
Of clutching deep blue darkness
Humming at the edges
Of both their thoughts,
The elephant of time
Plundering onwards whilst each day
Ends thicker with a lost sense
Of themselves and the disparity
Between what is wanted
And what is needed,
Each is distanced by the weight
Of what it really should be,
But shapeless, unfit,
But settled for in the fonder absence
Of what might have been once,
Before this tawny light of grey,
Until perhaps some defining pitch
When all that remains
Is the cold, dull nub of necessity
And this hardly bears any resemblance
To the initial desire for love.