"Icicles"

...the animosity of intrigue.

The icicles of feeling so often

Flourish upon naked heartbeats;

One to another,

Glistening upon the new-fallen snow, and always

Streaked with the wisdom of time.

Evidence lives on in silence,

Black stains of triumphant bitterness

Shed from brilliant eyes grown cold

Without remorse,

Without remembrance.

All despondent lovers suffer from majestic illusion;

A heart only truly feels once betrayed,

As countless outpourings of trite poignancy

Might so easily suggest.

Such cynicism may never appeal to the senses of overly romantic desolates

Defending the ideal virtue,

And mislabeled nobility selfishly poisoning

That which we see as love

With the face of calculated seduction,

Callous desires worthy to be called anything but noble.

Even as Shakespeare had his own dark-eyed Muse,

As often maligned in reputation as praised by her admirers,

So the suffering heroines live on,

Withering in melodrama, made frail and invisible

From the weight of countless imagined afflictions

And wrongs well-aimed at feigned innocence.

Not all find the poetry in this end, preferring strength,

The ability to conceal the scars left behind, ignoring

Bitter insults flung from behind glass walls of discontent

To ease acidic wounds and imagined torments.

There is a certain amount of pride and arrogance in

Knowing it is far easier to despise her

Than to understand.

Regret is the burden of the fool and the innocent,

And she, being neither,

Shall not be troubled.