Here’s a breakdown drafted in your voice that you can use as a Poem of the Week feature, craft note, or video description.<hr><h2 id="poem-of-the-week-loveless" data-toc-id="poem-of-the-week-loveless" class="font-editorial font-bold mb-2 mt-4 [.has-inline-images_&amp;]:clear-end text-lg first:mt-0 md:text-lg [hr+&amp;]:mt-4" style="font-size: 24px; line-height: 1.2;">Poem of the Week: “Love(Less)”</h2>Poem:Love(Less)Lust, a four letter word written in blood, with a psychotic break hidden between the lines.Lust, Jet-black Juggernaut shifting behind masks of ivoryLust, Save your pseudo-Seraphim smile for your next victimLust, I will paint a moonless sky for every lonesome night that I went on without the light in your eyesLust, I have found much more in this darkness than ever in your lightLust, This darkness bites - so if you tell me you want me, tell me at night.<hr><h2 id="what-i-was-trying-to-do" data-toc-id="what-i-was-trying-to-do" class="font-editorial font-bold mb-2 mt-4 [.has-inline-images_&amp;]:clear-end text-base first:mt-0" style="font-size: 24px; line-height: 1.2;">What I was trying to do</h2>This poem is me doing a kind of Dickensian inversion—taking that loaded four‑letter word and turning it on its head. Instead of “love,” I give you “lust” as the central character, a word written “in blood” with a psychotic break wedged between the letters. I wanted to show what romance looks like when you’re carrying mental illness into the relationship: obsession, delusion, unhealthy boundaries, and the way desire can feel like a predator wearing a halo.It’s also a record of my first relationship seen through the lens of psychosis and intrusive thought. The “pseudo‑Seraphim smile” is that false angelic front, the person (or the feeling) that presents itself as salvation but feeds on your instability. By the end of the poem, the speaker has learned more in the dark than in the lover’s light. That’s the core realization: the darkness is not just suffering; it’s where clarity and self‑knowledge finally show up.<hr><h2 id="craft-choices-and-how-they-carry-the-mentalillness" data-toc-id="craft-choices-and-how-they-carry-the-mentalillness" class="font-editorial font-bold mb-2 mt-4 [.has-inline-images_&amp;]:clear-end text-base first:mt-0" style="font-size: 24px; line-height: 1.2;">Craft choices and how they carry the mental‑illness love story</h2><ol class="marker:text-quiet list-decimal pl-8"><li class="py-0 my-0 prose-p:pt-0 prose-p:mb-2 prose-p:my-0 [&amp;&gt;p]:pt-0 [&amp;&gt;p]:mb-2 [&amp;&gt;p]:my-0">Anaphora as obsession: “Lust,” at the start of each stanza Repeating “Lust,” as a kind of invocation at the top of each stanza mimics the looping, obsessive nature of intrusive thought. The poem keeps returning to the same word, trying to define it, trying to name what happened. That repetition is how the mind circles a trauma, trying to make sense of it from a dozen different angles.</li><li class="py-0 my-0 prose-p:pt-0 prose-p:mb-2 prose-p:my-0 [&amp;&gt;p]:pt-0 [&amp;&gt;p]:mb-2 [&amp;&gt;p]:my-0">Psychotic break “hidden between the lines” That line is literal and metaphorical. On the surface, you’re redefining a word. Underneath, you’re telling the reader that the poem itself is built around a break: meaning fractures in the space between lines. The enjambment—“written in blood, / with a psychotic break / hidden between the lines”—forces the reader to fall through that gap. It’s how you let form echo the experience of dissociation and mental fragmentation.</li><li class="py-0 my-0 prose-p:pt-0 prose-p:mb-2 prose-p:my-0 [&amp;&gt;p]:pt-0 [&amp;&gt;p]:mb-2 [&amp;&gt;p]:my-0">Jet‑black Juggernaut vs. masks of ivory The “Jet‑black Juggernaut” is a gorgeous, violent metaphor for lust as an unstoppable force barreling through your psyche. The “masks of ivory” it hides behind evoke purity, innocence, angelic imagery. Together, they dramatize how dangerous dynamics in relationships can disguise themselves as “pure love.” This is romance as battlefield, where the enemy is wearing a saint’s mask.</li><li class="py-0 my-0 prose-p:pt-0 prose-p:mb-2 prose-p:my-0 [&amp;&gt;p]:pt-0 [&amp;&gt;p]:mb-2 [&amp;&gt;p]:my-0">Reclaiming darkness from the lover’s “light” In the middle of the poem, the speaker still wants the light in the other’s eyes. But then the perspective flips: “I have found much more / in this darkness / than ever in your light.” That’s a decisive move. The person’s “light” is exposed as shallow or harmful compared to the brutal honesty of sitting alone with your symptoms, your loneliness, your mind. Darkness here becomes a place of knowledge, not just harm.</li><li class="py-0 my-0 prose-p:pt-0 prose-p:mb-2 prose-p:my-0 [&amp;&gt;p]:pt-0 [&amp;&gt;p]:mb-2 [&amp;&gt;p]:my-0">Ending with conditional desire: “tell me at night” The last couplet, “This darkness bites – / so if you tell me you want / me, tell me at night,” holds a paradox. On one hand, the speaker still wants to be wanted. On the other, they’ve learned that desire is a creature of the dark, not the day. The condition (“tell me at night”) acknowledges how mental illness reframes intimacy: love’s declarations feel more honest, more dangerous, maybe even more bearable, when they arrive in the same terrain as the symptoms—after dark.</li></ol><hr><h2 id="how-you-can-use-this-as-a-readerwriter" data-toc-id="how-you-can-use-this-as-a-readerwriter" class="font-editorial font-bold mb-2 mt-4 [.has-inline-images_&amp;]:clear-end text-base first:mt-0" style="font-size: 24px; line-height: 1.2;">How you can use this as a reader‑writer</h2>If you’re trying to capture what love feels like through the lens of mental illness, you can borrow this approach:<ul class="marker:text-quiet list-disc pl-8"><li class="py-0 my-0 prose-p:pt-0 prose-p:mb-2 prose-p:my-0 [&amp;&gt;p]:pt-0 [&amp;&gt;p]:mb-2 [&amp;&gt;p]:my-0">Choose a single charged word (love, faith, home, family) and redefine it in multiple stanzas, each starting with the word as an invocation.</li><li class="py-0 my-0 prose-p:pt-0 prose-p:mb-2 prose-p:my-0 [&amp;&gt;p]:pt-0 [&amp;&gt;p]:mb-2 [&amp;&gt;p]:my-0">Let each stanza show a different mask that word wears in your life—angelic, predatory, numbing, exhilarating.</li><li class="py-0 my-0 prose-p:pt-0 prose-p:mb-2 prose-p:my-0 [&amp;&gt;p]:pt-0 [&amp;&gt;p]:mb-2 [&amp;&gt;p]:my-0">Hide the “break” in the lineation: use enjambments and abrupt stops to mimic how your thoughts actually fracture under stress.</li><li class="py-0 my-0 prose-p:pt-0 prose-p:mb-2 prose-p:my-0 [&amp;&gt;p]:pt-0 [&amp;&gt;p]:mb-2 [&amp;&gt;p]:my-0">Let the poem end not in tidy self‑help resolution, but in a conditional truth: what you’re willing to accept, when, and on what terms.</li></ul>That’s the heart of this piece: not cleaning up the story of your first relationship, but pinning down those raw, guttural epiphanies from the middle of it—and naming lust as both symptom and teacher.

Weekly Poem Breakdown  -"Love(Less)" by Adam Levon Brown  

Craft choices and how they carry the mental‑illness love story

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Weekly Poem Breakdown -"Love(Less)" by Adam Levon Brown

Weekly Poem Breakdown -"Love(Less)" by Adam Levon Brown

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