Is romantic love smitten down? Was the dance dissected leaving only empty choreography tucked away on crumbling paper in some obscure antique box? Was it sold, like magician’s fare to carnivals, nothing more than slight of hand like the skeletons of discarded cotton candy?

Or is it the ghost that lives in dreams and wishes, tucked away from the jaws of the emperical wizards who hord left brain cookery in vaults and shoot mental artillary into the hungry crowds like shim sham preachers under circus tents.

Can it be found hiding at the meeting place of bittersweet yesterdays and forbidden tommorows, where lovers touch as children, inocent and unlearned in the art of power and lust.

Perhaps it lies waiting beneath our marble hearts to rescue us from the lost mantras of isolated independence, the false chants of freedom and the glib promises of personal best. Perhaps it lies waiting behind the ego’s door, in the nursury where rhymes are the soul’s song and not the advertiser’s cute cliche. Perhaps it lives within a flower’s petals, uncaptured by the word gurus, but as simple as the fragrance of the rose, seared upon the soul’s face in music only our heartsong knows.