Love’s Pawnshop
by Odin Roark

Unable to pay the debt
Love is often pawned
Sympathy as a claim check
Stuffed deep in pockets of suffering

Such self-deprecation roams the streets
Perplexed with using the tender
As peace offering to the beloved
A gesture risking resentment
Nothing conducive to healing

Perhaps better spent on survival-type passion
Allusion’s princely blind beggar with pencils
Rewards for the coin-drop sound in the cup
Solicitude’s offering without expectation
Without questionable agenda

Such is the giving spirit
Often in trouble
Never without company
Welcoming emotion’s exchange
Leaving behind longing’s conundrum
To examine itself truly naked

Sincerity’s immunity
Impervious to manipulation
Or desire’s self-deceit
Once the reward
Now but a cast-aside
A melting of chicanery’s
Falsity of spirit

Later

Amidst midnight shadows
A lowly pawn ticket of imagination
Embraces the enigmatic unsharpened pencil

They rest side by side
Atop life’s universal shelter
Where loveless anxiety takes cover
Awaiting another day
Perhaps THE day
When needs will find
Love’s pawnshop ready
To teach them as well

Precious lessons

Somewhere

Out there