Finding The Love Of My Life Poem by Raj Arumugam

1
past puppy loves
I found true love early
and I’d married Susi
and lived four years
when I met Lily
and I said to Susi:
Darling, when I met you it was
true love
but now Lily offers eternal love

and Susi spat me out
like bad sushi
and I lived with purple Lily;
soon our eternal love wilted
and I lived alone in a charity flat
eating baked beans
and hamburgers
and grew a beard
that made me
look like Rip Van Winkle



2
I shaved three years later
and went out and met
the only love of my life, Sunshine
and we lived in her father’s home
two years
when I met her sister
who returned broke
from five years
as a stockbroker in New York
and she shared with me a shower
of bliss and Heavenly Love
and so I said to Sunshine:
How about if I moved over to
your sister’s?

and Sunshine said:
yeah, maybe you could
also take your old bread
and army rations and strawberry jam
and pickles
you hide under your bed…
good riddance to bad rubbish, she said



3
look, Sunshine’s sister
Moonbeam no doubt
brought Heavenly Love
but Lint whom I met
at the dog food section
of the suburb’s supermarket
brought a kind of Doggy Love
I’d never seen;
so I said to Lint
(she had a nametag on) :
How about I come and live with you?

and she said:
Yeah, and with my pets, you mean?

Yeah, and with your pets, I grinned




4
and now I live with Lint
these ten past years
and yeah, with her pets too…
I live with her, yes,
in our shack beyond the suburbs
down past the woods
and I get all the food for free
after she comes back on her shopping spree
after every Thursday when she gets
weekly Disability Payment
(for which she puts on a limp
and mumbles like Marlon Brando
and moves like she’s going in all directions)
and she offers me cans as much as she can
just to get me enough energy
to see me through, you know, our weekly 5-hour romp
and I live happily
with no care or worry
with Lint of the deserted valley
with her pets and pests
…ummm…and with her twenty cats,
and with her five parrots all in cages
in her kitchen
and the dogs that roam free and lick the cats;
and of course the vermin
and the ticks and the parasites
and the bugs
and did I mention the thirty chooks in the backyard?
and did I mention Lint’s mice she keeps in her room
into which she only lets me in on Thursdays?
and all other days my place is in that huge kennel
her old Doberman used to live in
in the corner beside the gate
and I’ve got my own blankets and pillows
and the dogs keep guard all day and night for me
and it’s pleasant days and a free life now
though once in a while I still do dream
of my puppy loves
and of my four years with Susi
and all that true love with Lily
and Sunbeam and Moonbeam
but now I’ve got Lint
and all her pets and pests and vermin