Love in subliminal advertising

last night a friend called me at 2.15

and talked about love

I was sleepy but I stayed up

because the question of love has

always puzzled me

I have often wondered, in reveries

whether sleeping or awake,

while sitting on the crapper

while fiddling with my john

watching porn

combing my girlfriend’s hair

brushing my dog’s coat

in and out of the doctor’s clinic

drinking beer and catching up with an old friend

driving into town, blind

without my spectacles, and with them.

Love, this chasm of human suffering

where all joy dies,

where I lost my virginity

thinking it would make her LOVE me

hoping that ejaculating on a woman’s panties

is the pinnacle of romance

wondering if she did actually put out

or was I dreaming the entire time

shoving my weiner into a foxhole

anyway, I am told that LOVE is mysterious and strange

by nuns and 50 year old married guys, prancing around

in lungis and boxer shorts

beaten on the daily by their fat annoying wives

or by God, with his divine dickie

Then there are the facebook rants

by sapiosexuals or pansexuals or one of 76 gendered geckos

informing us that the normal has shifted,

changed shape

that tolerance is the new NORMAL

sisterhood the new LOVE

and liberalism, the new GOD

All this while, my friend sobs and talks about never finding love

such miserable creatures we are

slave to fake gods

children of subliminal advertising.