Love For Love’s Sake Poem by Dónall Dempsey

All summer I watched you
paint that picture.
It came along in dribs & drabs
fits & starts

total devotion or nothing at all.
Then one day you just stopped.
I asked you would it ever be
finished.

You said you had run out of red
just as you had run out of love
...there was nothing you could do.
And that rather than complete it
you would destroy it.

You threw a pot of black paint
all over it
...smashed it.
To this day I still have it.
It hangs upon my bedroom wall


complete in its destruction
...its brokenness
an abstract in oils.
Oh, I’ve re-titled it:
LOVE LIES BLEEDING.