I can’t write love poems like I used to

With youthful ignorant fantasy

The knight on a bone white steed

Riding to rescue my dear damsel

Sweet kiss upon listless lips

Something stolen nothing given

The illusion of romance has been ripped

Something taken in repose

Is not a trait forthcoming

To force oneself on the unresponsive

Because you are owed

Is not the imagery I had imagined

It may have been youthful ignorance

And thought about in innocence

Fantasized with no feelings of malice

But as I age

The field of view becomes clearer

The muslin cloth has been torn

Ragged edges wafting to show things clearer

I cry for the boy I was

For the love struck romantic

Because he could not view the full picture

The world beyond his adolescents

The cruelty and disgust of that scene

The unresponsive princess

Deep in sleeps protection

To be set upon by entitlement

And owned for those days after

Because what is a woman

But someone to be rescued

I still weep for those boys and girls

Who in their innocence

Fell in love with an abusive ideology

Indoctrinated to take and to be submissive

I can’t write love poems like I used to

I am no longer that young boy

Ignorant in his innocence.