I Keep Falling For You - George Tomsett
This is a poem about finding hope in lost love.
Written by George Tomsett (pictured on the shoulders).
This is for everyone who finds themselves saying "... in another lifetime, maybe."
I Keep Falling For You
In 2011, I poked you on Facebook every day,
locked to my wheezing computer until you poked me back.
In 1982, I stalked you. Relentlessly.
Kicking the curb outside your house every morning,
fingers crossed to see you leaving with a Walkman in hand.
In 1951, we strolled down the boardwalk
wearing slacks and smart blue shirts with boat shoes
and wayfarers. I recall you bought me ice cream,
and after you swam in the roaring sea
with that perfect, portico, European torso,
your skin like vanilla cream, my boy, oh, that sweet,
bright, smooth skin. Met you that life in America.
In 1839, I wrote a romantic novel about you;
triumphant, it’s still on certain syllabi, and its lines lilt like
a lullaby on the minds of mothers and lovelorn students,
florists and anglophiles and, oh, around 2500 BC,
I piled up a pyramid for you.
Now you’re perched on the foot of my single bed,
smiling kindly, your face signalling red
as you say, ‘You shouldn’t have done all this,
mate, come on. I’m straight, you know I am. I’m so sorry.’
But you kissed me. In this life. You did.
I was there. And now I am desperately in love with you.
Timelessly so. I’ll wait for you to love me again, even if it takes
another ninety nine lives.
Because when I lost you in the wars
I scoured the Earth in Kon Tiki. I left you clues
in Hamlet and the sonnets I wrote weekly,
yes, of course, now you see.
I built London and Stockholm in the lives you couldn’t love me
and during those you did we swore to reunite in the next,
no matter how scattered or irreconcilably
different.
So we will be together again, if only for a night.
In this life you’re straight but in the next you’ll be mine,
because I built this world for you,
time after time.
You are the love of my life. You are the love of my lives.
