The Love We Make or Take

(Songs of Despair)

  
Oh, how I would love to be able to take it slow. 
To make it last.  
To savor every last morsel of ecstasy, 
Taste each crumb on my greedy tongue
But this thing here burns 
Like a nuclear buffalo wing, and, 
Before I know it, it's over, one way or another.  
Rhythm and the echoes of moaning hasten my insatiable appetite, 
And I can't help striving for some destination, 
Some place to take cover from 
The bombs that seem to be falling all over the world.  
Your body is my umbrella, and I know that 
It is selfish of me to think of it this way, 
That I am again making this more about taking than giving.  
The self-loathing and guilt only drive me harder and further inside myself.  

Remember when we walked through the ghetto,  
The large snowflakes falling all around us, 
Watching them melt upon contact 
With skin and winter pavement?  
Remember how we rushed home
To get busy with our next twenty-five years?  
How did everything get so jumbled along the way?  
Why can't I put memories in chronological order?  
When did we start pasting our pictures on 
external hard drives instead of scrapbooks? 
And now they are spilled about on something called "the cloud?"  
I know winter never lasts, but it always returns, and it seems to come sooner with every passing  year even in a world beset by global warming.  
Maybe John and Yoko weren't only trying to stop a war by whiling away their time in bed  together.  
Maybe they were simply trying to survive, to take refuge in each other.  
What more can we do?  

I beg you, help me to slow down.  
Help me to discover the path to clarity 
As if it would propagate the human species.  
When I go faster, faster, faster,  
Hold me back as if I could capture an instant of time,  
Grab a lightning bug out of the summer night,  
And turn it into an eternity full of illumination.  

Please don't misunderstand my lack of small talk. 
In some ways, I've been trying all my life  
To get to a place where words and images don’t matter. 
As much as my loquacious impulse fights against the notion, 
Except for the soulful grunts and squeaking springs, 
Silence may be what I've been striving for all along.

Notes from Eric:

Can ever do anything that is truly selfless? I’m often bothered by this question.

From dropping some spare change into the bucket of the homeless person, to engaging in the most intimate acts of love: isn’t there always something in it for me?

Can anyone be truly altruistic?

Or, like so many other things, is it just a matter of degree?

I suppose it is a good thing that the universe made benefitting others a byproduct of trying to satisfy our own ego and desires.