Wound Cream

Perhaps it is the way Love’s promoted;

You’d think it came in a jar,

Something that could be spread

Over all that bothers us,

A heal-all, a wound cream,

A media promoted fairy-tale

Gutted of darkness.

Though its contradictions

Nail us to each other

And the hunger for it

Can be our undoing,

We still use it as a prop,

As proof we are living.

How hard to do other than

Give it precedence, forgetting

How friendship outlives it,

Commits fewer crimes,

Wears its name at times.