Risk Reward Ratio Poem by richard ilnicki

I think I'm dying tonight,
but, of course, you'd say
I've always been dying.
But this time I say, 'Not like this.'
I see something I've never seen before,
a paradigm shift Copernican in nature.
I see the frustration of not loving enough.
Of sitting on the cusp of nonchalance
safely posed in the eye of the storm of love,
never having been picked-up
and tossed willy-nilly
like a soft rag doll of love,
never having been pushed and pulled, jerked
or hammered out of shape by love,
never bludgeoned by the vicissitudes
of a double-minded lover,
never stepped on or abused by love,
never out of my self control of love.

I think I'm dying tonight
never having suffered from the anorexia of love;
that peculiar appetite
controlled by butterflies,
things I can't seem to keep down.

You smile
and with the wisdom of a Confucian sage
you say, 'Why risk it? '