Category Archives: Love poem

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/

Rainy Season: NaPoWriMo 2019, Apr 25

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Rainy Season

When you walk into my photograph
in your new yellow raincoat,
a stalk of grain is in your hand
and you are plucking at it, shredding it.

I have set the tripod,
pinned the curtain back,
and I am waiting for the turn of light.

Chaff blows in the rain behind your shoulders.
In the wet street I can see you twice.
Steam from the straw pile down the street,
yellow blossoms of the spirea bush—

and still
I do not close the shutter,
for I am waiting for the turn of light.

You woke earlier than usual today,
craving fresh yogurt.
A waxed street that your footsteps
and the wheels of bicycles had marked

did not prompt me
to close the shutter,
for I was waiting for the turn of light.

When you return three hours  later,
your pockets  filled with fresh strawberries,
as though this is the reason
for which you left,

your shadow passes
across my photograph
as I stand waiting for the turn of light.

 


For the NaPoWriMo poem we are to write a poem that:
     Is specific to a season
Uses imagery that relates to all five senses (sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell)
Includes a rhetorical question, (like Keats’ “where are the songs of spring?”)

The Cure: NaPoWriMo 2019, Day 5

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The Cure

That sadness in your heart?
You told me once that she had
kissed it all away.

But still I could detect,
once she was gone, the echo of
that sadness in your heart.

We took your sad past to the ocean
where I hoped the waves had
kissed it all away.

Yet, like a bitter tide, it returned
and I could see again
that sadness in your heart.

I took your sad past to the mountain,
where once again I hoped the wind and sun had
kissed it all away,

and when, on our descent,
I feared the reappearance of
that sadness in your heart? I
kissed it all away.

 

 

The NaPoWriMo prompt today was to write a villanelle that contained at least two of three other components.  Here is the vital information concerning that prompt:

the villanelle. The classic villanelle has five three-line stanzas followed by a final, four-line stanza. The first and third lines of the first stanza alternately repeat as the last lines of the following three-line stanzas, before being used as the last two lines of the final quatrain. And to make it an even more virtuoso performance, Dargan’s alternating lines, besides being taken from songs, express “opposing” ideas, with one being about sleeping, and the other waking.

Following Dargan’s lead, today we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that incorporates at least one of the following: (1) the villanelle form, (2) lines taken from an outside text, and/or (3) phrases that oppose each other in some way. If you can use two elements, great – and if you can do all three, wow! (I did all three. The opposing line “There’s a sadness in my heart” is the title of a song recorded by Legs and “kissed it all away” is a song title from the album “The Distance Between Two Truths” recorded by Mark Sholtez.)