"Icicles"
...the animosity of intrigue.
The icicles of feeling so often
Flourish upon naked heartbeats;
One to another,
Glistening upon the new-fallen snow, and always
Streaked with the wisdom of time.
Evidence lives on in silence,
Black stains of triumphant bitterness
Shed from brilliant eyes grown cold
Without remorse,
Without remembrance.
All despondent lovers suffer from majestic illusion;
A heart only truly feels once betrayed,
As countless outpourings of trite poignancy
Might so easily suggest.
Such cynicism may never appeal to the senses of overly romantic desolates
Defending the ideal virtue,
And mislabeled nobility selfishly poisoning
That which we see as love
With the face of calculated seduction,
Callous desires worthy to be called anything but noble.
Even as Shakespeare had his own dark-eyed Muse,
As often maligned in reputation as praised by her admirers,
So the suffering heroines live on,
Withering in melodrama, made frail and invisible
From the weight of countless imagined afflictions
And wrongs well-aimed at feigned innocence.
Not all find the poetry in this end, preferring strength,
The ability to conceal the scars left behind, ignoring
Bitter insults flung from behind glass walls of discontent
To ease acidic wounds and imagined torments.
There is a certain amount of pride and arrogance in
Knowing it is far easier to despise her
Than to understand.
Regret is the burden of the fool and the innocent,
And she, being neither,
Shall not be troubled.