What Love is

Everybody talks about love but does anyone know what it is. I happen to know it's composed of sunlight- explanation NOT forthcoming.


Love
is a wheelchair
going downhill at ninety miles an hour
but you’re too scared to jump

Love
is a sheet
With a hump rounded by nearly invisible curves
that exists most profoundly in the imagination

Reality is a state of continuous decay-
seen through time-lapse photography
But...
Is this Love?

A one-act play
Where fellatio rhymes with Horatio

Where small children tumble slowly in space
Through the goalposts of a ruined building
One more field goal attempt from an eight-inch canon shot
“He’s up...it’s...good!!!
Scoring a direct hit
Three more points in a game that never ends

Diamonds are not forever
And if they are a girls best friend
Then where do you plug it in?
I've never seen a diamond long or hard enough
To satisfy any woman I've ever met

Is it true
that it is Love which manifested you?
Is it true
That Love is always true?
Or is it something uncertain?
I have been watching and I am not sure

Too many people get warts on their lips from kissing frogs
duck walking through unbelievably small corridors-
to please-
and impress-
someone with their devotion toward
“Look what I've done for you!”
You just know they would crawl a mile over broken glass-
to osculate your ass

Love...love...love...
Just exactly what is it-
what you feel
or me...?
Is it furious, sweaty and satiated to sleep?
Or pure as a rose white flame-
In the heart of some dude in a sheet who has forgotten his name?

Is it a bullet blown from the hand as the souls last kiss?
Is it a kiss that kills like a bullet
or,
is it something I missed?

Is it...?
Is it...?
Words stumble from the tongue like concrete blocks
The hands grow cold with sweat
The blood rushes
and the flagpole rises
and the flag waves aloft on it’s own Fourth of July
and fireworks fill the sky!!!

Is that love?
When the purple-headed dragon rears
and spits into the swollen darkness...
from which springs both madness
And escape?

Is it Love that loses one life to save another
or many,
or none?
Is it Love that cares
and yet does not care,
for anyone?

Is it Love that violently force-feeds innocence-
into a state of shocked and shaken disbelief?
Is Love a rose through which your hand passes-
when you reach out for it,
or is it a piece of meat?

Is it that slow and certain surge of satisfaction...
or two months in traction?

Is it the hairy well-
of some noxious back door into Hell,
or a young girl with a penny at a wishing well?
And,
will it sell?

Is it some lonely guy mending a sparrow’s wing,
or a ravaged squab with its blood on the grass?
Or any one of us quiet for once...
Or none of these things...?

Love...
It seems...
Is the total of it all
And love is what survives
No matter what occurs
It is somewhere I once was-
but the recollection blurs...
Did we go to my place,
or hers?

It is somehow interwoven with life
Perhaps the interweaving consciousness despite,
our attempts...
to have a personal effect...
on anyone who hasn't met us yet...

For me...
Love is over the border-
beyond which we think
“Hey shweetheart, how about a drink?”
Ah love...


'What Love is' is track no. 8 of 9 on
Visible and The Critical List's 1987 album

'Jews From Outer Space'


Click through to buy this track, or buy the whole album, 'Jews From Outer Space' from Visible's store.

© 1987 Visible