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Mad in the Throes of a Foolish Heart
December 8, 2025
Oh Erato, daughter of Memory,
Bring me the hearts of
Those far-gone poets of love.
Send with them its meaning,
That I may see,
Or curse me with
An unfeeling heart,
Without love to give
To those I cannot love.
Give me the eyes of a dead man,
Unseeing to the
Passions of faulty flesh.
Imbue in me the lungs
Of a man who can breathe
Without sobs of pain.
Bring me these dogged hearts,
In wrappings of parchment and foil.
Let me gorge myself,
On facsimile passion and intimacy.
Let me die slowly in their ink,
Before I choke
On the vile blood of my heart.
Give me peace,
In love or death.
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I am currently trapped between 3 loves: one present, one past, and one future. One, in particular, is causing me particular grief because he's a close friend who would never love me. The other two are girls whom I can't seem to get over completely. I wish I could control all the love I have to give and the loneliness I feel, and I wrote this poem to express that.
It begins by invoking Erato, the muse of erotic and/or romantic poetry, which was inspired by the beginning of Hesiod's Theogony, which also begins by referring to the muses. I did so because I feel that love and loneliness, whatever form they are in, connect us all.