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Love's Not the Way to Treat a Friend by
Richard Brautigan via greatpoets on LiveJournal.
Love’s not the way to treat a friend.
I wouldn’t wish that on you. I don’t
want to see your eyes forgotten
on a rainy day, lost in the endless purse
of those who can remember nothing.
Love’s not the way to treat a friend.
I don’t want to see you end up that way
with your body being poured like wounded
marble into the architecture of those who make
bridges out of crippled birds.
Love’s not the way to treat a friend.
There are so many better things for you
than to see your feelings sold
as magic lanterns to somebody whose body
casts no light.
I have known a lot of people who seem to cast no light. They grab at anyone else's that they can see through the trees and they do it for their own survival, but the really frightening thing about them isn't that they suffer so badly. The really frightening thing about them is that they used to be just like you, wandering through the woods with a light until they were mugged and left in the dark. They're scary because unless you have some way to defend yourself from them, they're your future.
No thank you.
So sometimes it means going without that desperate grasping love that reduces the one so desired into a faceless and nameless carrier of lanterns, but I am really not too sorry to miss out. What I can't understand is how many people seem to think that making it through with a little light left of my own would mean I gave nothing. There are more ways to give than to die.
Richard Brautigan via greatpoets on LiveJournal.
Love’s not the way to treat a friend.
I wouldn’t wish that on you. I don’t
want to see your eyes forgotten
on a rainy day, lost in the endless purse
of those who can remember nothing.
Love’s not the way to treat a friend.
I don’t want to see you end up that way
with your body being poured like wounded
marble into the architecture of those who make
bridges out of crippled birds.
Love’s not the way to treat a friend.
There are so many better things for you
than to see your feelings sold
as magic lanterns to somebody whose body
casts no light.
I have known a lot of people who seem to cast no light. They grab at anyone else's that they can see through the trees and they do it for their own survival, but the really frightening thing about them isn't that they suffer so badly. The really frightening thing about them is that they used to be just like you, wandering through the woods with a light until they were mugged and left in the dark. They're scary because unless you have some way to defend yourself from them, they're your future.
No thank you.
So sometimes it means going without that desperate grasping love that reduces the one so desired into a faceless and nameless carrier of lanterns, but I am really not too sorry to miss out. What I can't understand is how many people seem to think that making it through with a little light left of my own would mean I gave nothing. There are more ways to give than to die.
