Category Archives: Broken Love Affairs

First Love

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First Love

That frisson of excitement that I once knew so well—
that doubling of my pulse rate that rang me like a bell.
Back when there was no contest over which would win
when impulse clashed with custom. Back when passion was no sin.
The sum of all that feeling sent us crashing into life—
before you were a husband, before I was a wife.

Remember how exciting those first love wanderings were?
Those first stirrings of passion that made us stretch and purr
like felines on that blanket stretched out on the grass?
Our love was a religion and each touch a holy mass.
Our loving was eternal up until the time we parted
and each became a memory of when loving first started.

Prompts today are sum, double, frisson and contest.

Ending Chapters

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Ending Chapters

When you came into my life, you entered so serenely.
How could I have known that you would exit so obscenely?
In our twenties, back when we were all consumed by lechery,
still, you were the only one who spiced it up with treachery.
Before your sweet elixir turned into bitter pill,
oh my dear, when love was new, what a delicious thrill.
I succumbed to all your kisses, swooned at your good looks.
Such a wild departure from chalk dust and from books.
That is what we all believed those single years were for.
Whatever sweet nights yielded, we always wanted more.
But then rude sanity stepped in to alter all our gladness.
A crazy sort of love might be revealed as simple madness.
So many novice lovers, guided by our lust—
all our romantic love stories have faded into dust.

 

The prompt words were serenely and treacherous. Here are the links:

https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/08/04/serenely/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/

Jar of Hearts

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Jar of Hearts

When I came into the room
the bookcase, too heavily laden by far,
had tipped and spilled our picture to the floor.

Its glass gathered with a broom,
the torn remains of us now saved here in a jar
I have neatly filed between fantasy and lore.

 

The “assignment” is to write a poem depicting a certain emotion or feeling without naming the emotion. And for the readers to say what emotion or feeling is being depicted in their comments. I have done my part, now you do yours!!! For dVerse poets pub

Wallpaper

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Wallpaper

Clinging to the wall
like an old wallpaper scrap
are the words
I want you, I want you, I want you, I want you.

Their refrain slides up and down
the musical scale—
an old country tune,
plaintive and clear.

Why do I want you?

The first time I met you,
there was something about the curl of your hair.
Your eyes, so familiar­—puzzled, as though
you, too, were trying to remember.

After that, it was
the set of your shoulders—
the arm stretched between your seat and mine
with your hand on the back of my seat.

All of your restraint an aphrodesiac.

The truth is
that I pined
for two days after I left,
then went on with my life.

Still, that scrap
of wanting
comes up early in the morning
as I waken

and my mind walks,
looking for someone to pin it to,
and every time
it stops at you.

The prompt today is puzzled.

Double Betrayal

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Double Betrayal

Her thoughts in parting were most candid,
her emotions, clearly branded
on her face. They reprimanded
him for how he cruelly stranded
her within their love affair—
how he left her standing there
alone, heartbroken, vulnerable.
How he’d burst her true love’s bubble.
Thus was her earlier promise broken
before a single word was spoken
when she met them, face to face,
engaged in intimate embrace—
that one who was to be her mister
with her faithless younger sister.

 

The prompt today is candid.

“Simmer” (Unlove Spell)

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Unlove Spell

For relief from suffering­­­ and a cure for love,
pluck a feather from a dying dove.
Press the feather in a hemlock crotch,
then fill a cauldron with his favorite scotch.

Wait for dark and stormy weather
to stew the hemlock crotch and feather.
Then add as listed all given below,
stirring steady with flame turned low.

First you write your lover’s name
twelve times and then once again.
Shred this page of caustic prose
with a thorn you’ve pried from a withered rose.

Add the paper, shred on shred,
recalling what he’s done and said.
Cast in the pot, till your mind is freed,
each slight recalled, each dreadful deed.

Add a patch you’ve torn from his favorite chair
and a single strand of his pubic hair,
wedding pictures of Niagara,
nose trimmers, hair dye and Viagra.

Add his hernia girdle and knee-length socks,
his shoes, his T-shirts and his jocks.
Cut all his pants off at the knees
and add them to his soggy T’s.

Stir the cauldron round and round.
If music’s playing, turn up the sound.
Sing along to the lyrics of
song after song of broken love.

“Don’t come home a cheatin’ with a lovin’ on your mind.”
Let these lyrics fill your thoughts—or others of their kind.
Ring up his mother on the phone. Say what he’s done to you.
Record her comments, rip out the tape, and add it to the brew.

Call all his girlfriends, all his buddies, everyone on your block.
Tell them that he’s impotent and has a little cock.
Write a note of what you’ve done and tape it to the pot.
Turn off the flame. Walk out the door. Forget the whole damn lot!!!

This is a rewrite of a poem written 5 years ago, but the image is new. I didn’t notice until after I’d taken this photo how appropriate the name of the pot was!!! The prompt today was simmer.

First Love’s Sting

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First Love’s Sting 

How deep the piercing, how sharp the sting
once young love starts to lose its bling.
Hearts start to stutter that used to sing.
You aren’t his princess, he’s not your king.
Your broken heart, trapped in a sling,
cannot follow when he takes wing,
taking with him everything.

No veil, no vows, no rice, no ring.
What passed for love was just a fling.
The love you thought would always cling
ripped cruelly with his exiting.
Your song of starlight, love and spring,
alas, was just a passing thing.
You’re left with “. . . . jada jing jing jing.”

No symphony, but just a ditty.
So goes first love, dear.  Such a pity.

 

The prompt yesterday was sting, but since the link still doesn’t work, let’s just say

sometimes, love doesn’t turn out to be as glorious as we might have wished.

Paper Shoes

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Paper Shoes

I’m folding me some paper shoes
so I can walk away the blues.
The love poems I cannot recall
I’ll scuff off as I pass the mall.
Someone will find my words all shredded—
how you wooed and won and bedded
one so young and so naive
that she could not help but believe
words pilfered from a Hallmark store
that you had often used before.

All those lovelorn lines obscured.
All that loneliness endured.
On Main Street I will shed my heart—
that part of me you tore apart.
All the lines I wrote about it,
all the times I grew to doubt it.
Your words the heel, my words the sole,
the sidewalks will consume them whole.

All the futile poetry
that passed once between you and me
ground into the pavement where
perhaps two lovers will find it there—
the words like seeds that hung around
hoping for more fertile ground.
Love sprouted from a used-up word
might strike some others as absurd,

But I like to think perhaps
our use of them was just a lapse.
Repeated by those other voices
who choose to live by other choices,
all those words that we now rue
might work for lovers who are new.

The prompt word today is paper. (Image from internet, photographer unknown.)

Unhitched

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Unhitched

I’ll slog through the mud and slog through the rain,
but I’ll never slog back to you, ever again.
If ever again I work fingers to bone,
I will be doing it here on my own—
not chasing your dreams or plowing your furrow
like a mule in a trace or a poor laden burro.
Life was a hard slog, dear, trudging with thee—
much more of a grind than just being me.
So I’ll point my gaze forward, not back where I’ve been
without pulling you with me, ever again.

As Groucho would say, “The secret woid today was ‘Slog!’

First Love and the School Reunion

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Then and Now

First Love

Zing! went our heartstrings. Zang! went our souls.
Eyes filled with wonder, hearts cupped like bowls
ready to fill  with passion and love.
Putting each other on like a glove.

First kisses miracles we’d never known.
No longer single all on our own.
Someone to cuddle, someone to spoon.
Hand holds and lip locks over too soon.

Misunderstandings, squabbles and fights.
Heartbreak and lonely Saturday nights.
Then a new glance from cars “U”ing  main.
Flirting and wooing all over again.

More hugs and kisses parked on a hill.
How to forget them? We never will.
At school reunions, we relive those lives,
husbands beside us, or boyfriends or wives.

Talking of other things: study halls, games,
but always remembering carving those names
in desktops and memory—first loves forever—
tendrils that bind us that we cannot sever.

We’ll soar ahead to the rest of our lives,
collecting new memories—bees in our hives.
But no honey finer than that we made first.
No sweeter lips and no stronger thirst.

Stored in our hearts, remembered but hidden,
hoarded like treasures sealed in a midden,
our lives are made richer by both now and then.
Past memories opening over again

spill out old secrets, then seal them away
to be unwrapped on some future day
when old schoolmates meet for two days’ reminiscing
of school pranks and ballgames and homework. And kissing.

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The prompt word today was “Zing.”