Love’s Fears, Fear’s Loves

Love and fear
love each other.
Each derides the
smother of the 
other while winking
and sinking the ship
so that the lifeboats
can be deployed
in this castle's 
miles-deep
moat. Escape
divides the happy
and the bad, the
sappy and the sad,
pretending, like
Anna Karenina,
that life ends if 
society bends past
the shaking joint.
No knee like need.
No breeze through
these hot weeds.
Love loves fear.
Fear fears love.
Shove both to
gather the best 
of lost worlds
and dwell in 
the shaky 
underground
between.