Now you find yourself in the land of crimson rivers with boats in the shape of hearts, floating along as if in a blissful dream. All of a sudden those great ’80s love songs are good again and you make a complete turn from hard rock or rap to soft rock or smooth R&B. The channel turns from “That ’70s Show” to Hallmark specials. Movies quickly fade from action/thrillers to romantic comedies and deep dramas. Yes, life as you once knew it is over.

All of a sudden your life becomes a movie and the entire new CD by John Mayer is the soundtrack…you can’t take the damn thing out of the CD player… not as if that is entirely a bad thing, but it just adds to the complete overwhelming take over of your mind and soul that you didn’t authorize. It seems Richard Marx and Wilson Phillips plotted some twisted, love-mush scheme to thwart any chance of survival for the single person inside of you.

Scottie has indeed beamed you up, but not aboard the Starship Enterprise but instead aboard the Relationship Compromise. Scottie might as well have beaten you up; either way you are in a world of hurt. Because no matter how hard you try to deny it, and how much you even lie to yourself, one simple fact remains:You have met someone you really like. They have something that scares the living bacteria out of you, one word … potential. That word in itself can move mountains in the world of love. This person has the key to your heart and you didn’t even give it to them.

With that is the danger. It carries with it the worst fear in the whole world … getting your heart broken. No matter how much you like someone, the fear can always send you running in the other direction. Especially if your heart has been used as a dartboard in the past. All in all it sucks. Because deep inside you just want that person to know how you feel, but your fear cripples you.

Maybe all you want is to sit next to this person and enjoy the same thing they are enjoying. Maybe if your hand had its own mind it would reach out and grab her hand, and maybe your lips would shut up for once, close together and do what they were intended to do … connect with her lips. And by doing this you may communicate more than you have the whole time you have known each other.

Oh what do I know? I am just a silly boy that didn’t even have enough courage to write this column in first person. I guess if I did have enough courage to address a certain situation in my life involving a certain organ in my body that rhymes with cart, then I would tell someone really special that they have brought poetry back into my life, something I have been missing for quite some time. With it came color and smiles … lots of them.

Even though I am in this emotional match of tug and war, not sure which way to go, life is sappy, but good right now. It feels really good to be alive. But I could do without the Richard Marx and Wilson Philips.