Category Archives: Love poem

Old Lovers

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Old Lovers

We meet in the kitchen,
your face slightly blue
in the light from the refrigerator.
Left-over shepherd’s pie in one hand,
a half-gallon of Costco vanilla ice cream in the other,
you seem suspended in a middle land
between repletion and guilt.

Being here for the same purpose,
I offer absolution,
and we talk about the future,
sitting with forks and spoons aloft,
eating from the same bowl and carton.
It is part of our sensuality,
this culinary communication at 2 a.m.

Wishing to go deeper,
we seek out chocolate
in that place
where you have hidden it
for years––on top of the refrigerator.
Knowing all your secrets,
I am the one who retrieves it this time.

This is what might happen
if we were not divided by miles,
you in your country,
me in mine. As it is,
you feast on ribs from Dexter Barbecue,
I eat the ice cream with a single spoon—
these mid-night fantasies
reality enough for old lovers
building new communions.

 

 

 

Prompt words today are talk, middle, sensual, future and kitchen.

Unlikely Pairing

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Unlikely Pairing

One ungainly orphan elephant, wandering and uncertain
of where his journey’s leading him, comes upon a curtain
of mist that rises from the plain, shimmering, evanescent.
The stars now muted overhead, the moon a fuzzy crescent.
He splits the curtain, comes upon a lone and lost impala
split off from the herd during some wild stampeding gala.
They form a duo and plod on, each looking for a herd.
Such an unlikely couple. Impossibly absurd.
And yet they struck a certain chord, each one with the other.
She was the sister that he lacked, and he her missing brother.
One thing led to another. She fit him like a glove,
and before they knew it, the two were fast in love.
When the baby came, it looked a bit like a nyala,
a bit like a rhinoceros––an elephantiala!!

Prompts today are intent, orphan, elephant (good grief) and evanescent. Add this one, too: curtain.

Fatuous Flattery

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Fatuous Flattery

I knew him as a rowdy member of our town constabulary,
noted for his bumbling but not lauded for vocabulary.
So when he whispered “pulchritudinous” with raspy voice
though he could have just said, “beautiful,” I wondered at his choice.
He could have called me riveting or gorgeous or just cute.
All those other adjectives I never would refute.
But when a noted doofus picks his words from a thesaurus,
I fear it has no other kinder effect than to jar us.
The fact that he would woo me being nothing but absurd,
nonetheless he might have won me if he’d used a different word!

Words of the day are pulchritudinous, raspy, rowdy and riveting.
photo by Jordan on Unsplash. Used with permission.

 

One-sided

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One-sided

 I’m tempted by your zaniness and your eclectic charm,
but I’m not reflected in your eyes, although I have your arm.
And though you yield umbrella to shield me from the drizzle,
when I look into your eyes, I don’t detect a sizzle.
So though I hang on all your words—mind everything you quote—
and though I laugh and coo and preen and blink my eyes and dote,
I know it is just habit, your attentive chivalry.
I know that I am into you, but you aren’t into me!

 

Prompts today were drizzle, reflect, eclectic and tempt.

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.

Midnight Misunderstanding

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Midnight Misunderstanding

You wrote your pattern on my soul
and carved my heart into a bowl
punctured to catch the esoteric
and let drain all the hysteric
words and anger loosed at night
when at last they came to light
let flow by that spirit’s brew
that turns you into more than you.

Friends found it quizzical at best
that you would be the one to wrest
my heart from back there on the shelf
where I’d stored it in myself.
It is a virtual mystery—
this how I found the you in me
that let me fold myself away
when your mother held her sway,

invading you with anger that
you loosed on me, like tit for tat.
Thus parents birth the very beast
that is what turns out to be least
of what their children might have wanted.
And it leaves us shamed and daunted
to see within ourselves what we
never thought could ever be

passed down from mother unto son
so that when her day was done
she could live on in infamy
through what he’d learned at mother’s knee.
And likewise, I have come to be
what my father passed to me,
retreating in the dark of night
to avoid mother’s bark and bite.

It is as though our parents battled
while we skulk, puzzled and addled
in those parts where when we dare
we perfectly convene to share
those parts of us fully our own
where our natures, fully blown,
meet in a more playful vein
over matters less inane.

The crux of it is this, my dear:
when you rage and bite, I fear,
retreating to another place
where I do not need to face
those dictums passed down by your hands
when you fire off your demands.
At heart, I know it isn’t you.
You’ve merely dropped the other shoe.

The first was one your mother dropped.
It was the second one that plopped
off your foot. Then I sneaked in
to nudge it from where it had been
to hide it underneath the bed
so later, with a clearer head,
we might be who we really are
without those shadow sides to mar
what we know in reason’s glare.
We are the perfect damaged pair!

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/05/18/rdp-saturday-patterns/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/05/18/fowc-with-fandango-quizzical/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/05/18/your-daily-word-prompt-esoteric-may-18-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/05/18/virtual/

The Reappearance

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The Reappearance

A luscious former lover that I haven’t seen in years
takes my quiet life by storm when he reappears.
He showers me with flowers he says are in arrears
for all those times he should have stayed to dry my tears.

Of course it’s an unsuitable last-minute love affair
that simply manifested like magic from pure air.
For well nigh on a dozen years, he wasn’t even there—
this Lochinvar who now insists we are the perfect pair.

Dare we try settle accounts so long overdue?
Dare we stir those embers to kindle love anew?
Or might our purple passion have assumed a lighter hue?
At this late date how can I know the proper thing to do?

Why so wan and pale, dear lover? Are you drained by worry?
Why such a push to reconnect? Why such frenetic hurry?
Why suddenly are you intent my favors to thus curry?
Why all this sudden passion? This trial without jury?

Who put me in this role of judge, called to adjudicate
what might be our future–our destiny and fate?
Once I would have loved the task, but now it is too late.
Why would you wait until the eve of my wedding date?

The wedding cake is stacked and iced, the flowers hung in bowers.
The time until my union is measured now in hours.
In a backroom with his friends, my groom paces and cowers.
Bridesmaids fuss and bother and rearrange their flowers.
Now is not the time, my dear, to reassert your powers.

All of us have daydreams of lovers of the past,
intent in our belief that they were not meant to last.
The sea of love, once entered, is so wide and deep and vast
that we lose connection with lines formerly cast.

I see you now sequestered in the far back row
beside the aisle I’ll walk down, my troth to here bestow.
You should have spoken sooner. You should have let me know.
For now it is too late to reverse the status quo.

Your flowers were so lovely that you sent today.
As  in the past, most exquisite—their colors bright and gay.
It would have been a dreadful waste to throw them all away,
so here they are,  tucked into my nuptial bouquet.

 

Prompt words today are suitable, arrears, anew and luscious. Links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/05/02/rdp-thursday-suitable/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/05/02/fowc-with-fandango-arrears/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/05/02/your-daily-word-prompt-anew-may-2-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/05/02/luscious/