Love and emptiness

I wake up thinking of you.
I lie down thinking of you.
I wait for sleep thinking of you.

I walk on the forest path,
I feel your lips on mine as if they had never left,
plastered on them like some plastic mask.
I rip at it, pulling skin and flesh
to rid myself of it, but it still remains.

I feel your body, formless,
enveloping my frame, squeezing out the breath
from my lungs, squeezing my heart
and throat like a great weight.
I pull it away like a giant sucker
tearing with it it skin, flesh and marrow
to free my heart, but it is still there,
the memory of your lovemaking.

I have to stop and stand every few hundred feet,
to stop and hold fast to my life airs
that seem to be pressing on my rib cage
and racing around in attempt to escape.

I breathe slowly through my nose
embracing you with my breath,
getting a hold of myself and freeing myself
from the haunting, the possession of spirits
the madness of your absence.

I call out loudly Radhe Shyam Radhe Shyam
there are no passers by to frighten
with my watery eyes and thinning hair,
my toothless mouth and white shaggy beard,
and forlorn beggarly appearance.

I am down to nothing, a mere cypher
invisible, reduced to nothing by
love and emptiness.