The Cruelest Game

Love is meaningless
And doesn’t truly exist
It’s a smokescreen of fabrications
Feelings and desires
Which are pointless, unfocused
Meant to fill the vast emptiness
And endless disappointment

Moments hang with indifference
After trust dissolves, slowly
Disintegrating into each component lie
Each fully exposed, illuminated
Leaving behind the requisite
Phosphorescent stain of guilt
At the mammoth gullibility

It’s a stain that can’t be hidden
Impossible to wash clean
And as the awareness of it lingers
Nagging, like an aching skull
Heavy in the heart
Crushing all hope of eventual happiness
Threatening every joy life bestows

Love is the cruelest game
A sting of the heart
A confidence scam
Intended to steal the joy of life
For the pleasures and cruelties
Of that merciless con artist
Who sees themself as an artiste

Left in its wake are questions
What is authentic?
What has actual meaning?
But nothing does, or can
Pain numbs meaning
Dumbs everything that can
Could, or should be said

What cannot be believed
Is what is ethereal
And unsubstantial
But this surrounds everything
It leaves nothing untouched by doubt
Dry eyes see, but they can’t experience
Feelings won’t relent
In spite of reason's cries
Tight, like a hood
Of heavy burlap
Tight at the neck
It smothers effectively

When that, hoped for, is not real
We, the ever-hoping
Drowned, face down, in a pool
Of that momentary chemical reaction
And self-delusion