Category Archives: Love

Kiss and Tell

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                   “How quick come the reasons for approving what we like.” – Jane Austen

Kiss and Tell

How did you make your way into my heart?
Quick, tell the answer before we next part.
Come into my comfort, then comfort me back.
The way of the pair beats the way of the pack.
Reasons are given for all that we do—
For the ways that we love and the ways that we woo.
Approving my actions in loving you is
What wins you my love and wins you this kiss.
We swear to each other that we will be true
Like all the lovers in storybooks do.

Like brides and their bridegrooms and lieges and kings,
We shall swear our obeisance and seal it with rings.
What others have done is what we will do.
Approving tradition will make one of two.
For the rest of our lives, if they revile and chide us,
Reason’s just one of the things that will guide us.
The love we keep strong will keep us together.
Come be my steed, and I’ll be thy tether.
Quick, take my hand and give me thy pledge.
How we’ll kiss in the meadow and roll in the sedge.

For dVerse Poets
This is actually a poem I wrote 8 years ago, inspired by a line of Jane Austen’s. Read the first word in each of my lines to see her line, first forward and then backwards.

and HERE is the prompt, if you’d like to kiss and tell yourself.

Father/Daughter Discourse

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Dear Daughter:

Your frenetic new admirer is not my cup of tea,
for even though I told him that he’d have to let you be,
he resorts to tactics like climbing that big tree
to gain visual access to our property.

You, too, must be incisive in telling him to cease
if you’d like his constant efforts to come to a surcease.
For though I am your father, he allots to me no power
but simply remains stubbornly in his leafy bower.

His persistent efforts prove that he is from that faction
that they label OCD, for he shows no reaction
to my constant pleas, so do you agree with me
that it’s necessary to just cut down the tree?

Dear Papa:

Alas, though my new suitor is not your cup of tea,
I find that his flavor is agreeable to me.
I am not your teenage daughter, for I’m almost thirty-three.
So please do not molest him, and do not cut down his tree.

It is a fact, dear parent, I’m of marriageable age.
So cease with your obsession and curb parental rage.
It’s time to cut the apron strings and set your daughter free,
for I prefer another perch to my father’s knee!

 

Prompt words are frenetic, incisive, faction, allot, and almost.

First Caress

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First Caress

Like that exquisite tension between first caress
and the dropping of shoe and removal of dress.

Like that mellow first stirring of love and desire
that creates a friction that flares into fire.

Appetites that merit no dish or no spoon
enjoyed under covers and the light of the moon.

Each generation discovers anew
That first caress and the drop of a shoe.

 

Prompt words today are exquisite, tension, merit, desire, generation, mellow.

The Answer (For Name Scavenger Hunt)

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                                                 The Answer

Another night, another day
Meanders in, then fades away
And still you do not come or call.
No news from you at all, at all.
Do you realize my heart is waiting
As your heart keeps on debating?

 

 

For Looking At Names prompt, we were to write an Acrostic poem using the name Amanda

Risky Business

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Risky Business

 How have you found your way into my dreams,
ripping my comfort apart at the seams?
I thought I’d escaped to back rooms of my self
but still I find thoughts of you stacked on a shelf
carefully obscured both in front and above
by other less perilous memories of love.

You walk nonchalantly into the room
that I have just cleared with a cloth and a broom
of other dangers and sadnesses not
knowing that once again, I will be caught.
Now I hide out behind walls at the back
where all of my worst fears reside in a stack.

Cowering here as you stride through the place
that your very presence has turned dark and base.
How could I have loved such a frightening soul,
the box of my heart turned into a bowl
with all of my secrets and weakness revealed—
things I now know that I should have kept sealed?

There you sit quietly, perched on a chair,
one hand on the desk top, one hand on your hair,
writing cruel words—I know about me.
I ease my way over, hoping to see,
but the paper is empty. Your ink has turned clear,
making improbable all that I fear.

As now I remember that I let you in,
forgetting all else in the charm of your grin.
The joy of your hand as it guided me sure
across the dance floor—all that allure
that kept me involved in the surface of you
overlooking the risks as most of us do.

If I’d had an x-ray taken of you
when our romance was shiny and new
I might have seen sooner your dangerous zone
and taken a detour and left you alone.
And perhaps now my dreams would be placid and calm
so I’d sleep without worry, sleep without qualm.

I might not have moved off to the edge of the world,
might still have been sleeping, never unfurled.
Perhaps it’s these dangers that make us let go
of all of the comforts of worlds that we know
and send us out elsewhere to discover a self
we’d have never found sitting safe on a shelf.

 

Written on the topic of risk for dVerse Poets.

Fresh Prizes: For Marilyn and Garry

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Fresh Prizes

Even though she thinks she knows him to the bone,
another little detail comes forward to be shown.
Like a little prize, presented for her viewing,
after all these years, he’s not finished with his wooing.

No fact  inconsequential as he unveils his life,
so even after decades as a man and wife,
new mysteries are still revealed in words coined charismatically.
Each new revelation, an avowal made emphatically.

 

This poem is in answer to Marilyn Armstrong’s comment about her husband, Garry:

Marilyn Armstrong

We still are discovering things we didn’t know about each other. You’d think we’d know it all by now, but we keep surprising each other. It’s kind of cool.

Prompt words today are prize, drain, emphatic, inconsequential and bone.

The Taste of Love in a Time of Cyber Romance

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photo snapped on Mar. 12, 2020 by okcforgottenman, in direct response to Judy’s post.

The Taste of Love in a Time of Cyber Romance

We met on OK Cupid. I was in Mexico, he in Missouri, 1600 miles away. What we feasted on in those first stages when nine hours was too short a conversation was words.  Thanks to Skype, these words could be either written or spoken and could be accompanied by sight of each other.  The rigors of wearing makeup 24 hours a day were nothing compared to the agony of not talking for from 4 to 9 hours a day. He later admitted he couldn’t tell the difference between me in makeup and me without, but I had to admit this made little difference, for it is a peculiarity of Skype that the other person can’t see you unless you are seeing yourself, and to see myself in the pure unadulterated natural cramped my style. How could I be a vixen when I didn’t look like one? He granted the point. Why shouldn’t he, if he couldn’t tell the difference, anyway?

This point taken care of, we passed on to the next stage of computer dating: our first dinner date. He watched on his desktop computer as I prepared a salad. This was a long and lengthy process followed as closely as was possible using the camera from my laptop. He had not yet purchased a laptop, so when he repaired to the kitchen to prepare his meal, I heard sound effects but little else. When he returned to his desk in the living room, he laid his meal in front of his computer. I had yet to see it as I, in turn, placed my salad in front of me and proceeded to take my first bite, watching closely my technique according to my Skype image. I chewed politely and then smiled, revealing the lack of lettuce shards on my front teeth. I looked up. He was watching me as lovingly as usual. Now, it was his turn. 

“What are you eating?” I asked. “Ham,” he said. This said, he lifted a huge hunk of ham on his fork, taking a dainty bite and chewing happily. 

“What else?” I asked.

“Just ham,” he answered. And so he demolished the entire pound of thick ham steak, now and then washing it down with a healthy swig of rum and coke.

Rum and coke. It had been one of our bonding experiences to find that the drink of choice of each was not only Rum and Coke, but Bacardi Rum with Caffeine-Free Diet Coke. How could this not be a romance made in heaven? 

But as for our culinary compatibility? From 1,600 miles away it seemed to be less of a problem than it was three months later, when we first made physical contact.

Well, there was a resolution. He started munching on carrots. We both found a like mania for potato chips, but true romance bloomed when I found the full bar of Hershey’s Chocolate atop his refrigerator. Who says we need to concentrate on our differences? Hershey’s Chocolate? Yes. Our first true taste of love.

 

For fandangos-provocative-question-60: How did you meet your mate or current love interest?

Your Touch

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Your Touch

As you turn over
in your sleep,
the pebbled grapefruit
of your cheek
grazes mine.

That swift percussion
of your heart
raises the blanket
stretched tight as a drum
between us.

Beat of your blood,
warmth of your thigh.
Your lips
another country,

divided from me
by that high border
of your shoulder
and the gravel of your heart.

Once, the touch of lips 
warm in their fervor,
rather than a mistake
in the night.

Once, the amaryllis
cast twilight
over our bed.
A harbinger

of yellow roses,
their petals fallen
over your pillow.
Their thorns.

 

For Weekly Scribblings  the prompt was to pick any three words from the given word list that fit the mood/theme of your prose or poem and write on a topic of your choice. 
amaryllis                  somewhat                percussion                darkness                  grapefruit
deep                           cast                         warmth                       blood                          touch
gravel                        twilight                    lips                              sky                             sleep
bedside                      scones                     fervour                      harbinger                 cogitation

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.

Hearts Adrift

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flying-heart

Hearts Adrift

You’ve piqued my curiosity, riled up my blood.
Brand new possibilities surge in like a flood.
Sages say enchantment is magic of a kind
that brings down your defenses and permeates your mind
with fantastic possibilities that make it fully probable
that heavy hearts inflate until they are light and bobbable.

See them on the tide line, floating all about—
free of any tether and free of any doubt.
A sea of love ‘s an image once rendered in a song
that catches in our hearts and makes them sing along.
They form a soft accompaniment to the real world’s roar
that’s telling us we’re not the type a lover would adore.

But you’ll find that hearts may come in many makes and guises,
and when you set your heart adrift, it just may yield surprises.

 

The prompt words today were sage, pique, enchantment and blood.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/02/10/rdp-sunday-sage/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/02/10/fowc-with-fandango-pique/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/02/10/your-daily-word-prompt-enchantment-february-10-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/02/10/blood/