Category Archives: Love poem

Against the grain

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Against the Grain

On those days when constant rain
spits against my window pane
with droplets forming into chains
and rushing down like liquid trains,
I try to keep my thoughts in rein
to guard against the certain pain
of remembering one who was the bane
of my existence. So I fein
a cheerfulness that is inane.
Attempts at humor that in the main
go against sincerity’s grain
are voiced in vain.
They do not light a shrouded brain.
They do not stop the constant rain.

The prompt today is grainy.

Shimmering Locks

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I found this poem written a year and a half ago that perfectly reflects today’s prompt word  shimmer. Since I had totally forgotten it, you probably have, too, so please read below:

lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown

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Locks

Locked up in my bedchamber. More than I can bear.
The beauty of my countenance, the shimmer of my hair
do me no good for no prince charming comes to find me here.
I will go unmarried––for my whole life, I fear.

My father thinks he honors me. I am his special treasure.
He worries not about my fate.  He thinks not of my pleasure.
I am but one more lovely thing he keeps for his collection––
admired for my golden locks, my flawless pale complexion.

I care not for beauty.  I care not for my tresses.
I do not treasure jewels or slippers or my ornate dresses.
A husband and a family are all that I desire.
A simple life’s the sort of life that I most admire.

From my window I look out upon the broad King’s Highway.
All roads must converge here––every path and byway.
And so I see…

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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.)

Sinning Lessons

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Sinning Lessons

I am a paragon of virtue. I have no other choice.
I do not have a figure.  I have no sultry voice.
I’ve no talent at kissing. The boys leave me alone.
I have no lovers calling me nightly on the phone.

I get my thrills from scripture. I embroider and I tat.
The creature that I cuddle with is an old grey cat.
Sometimes virtue’s chosen, but it isn’t so with me.
I’d rather spend my weekend nights on some feller’s knee.

But it isn’t in the cards. It’s just my Ma and me.
I guess I’ll just be buttoned up instead of brash and free.
My ma found a new hired man. He isn’t very tall.
A moustache but no muscles. Not swashbuckling at all.

But he has a good strong back. He carries water for me.
And for reasons I can’t fathom, he seems to adore me.
It’s one morning in the cow barn, milking Bossie, that I miss
the bucket with the milk stream when the hired man plants a kiss

on my neck as I bend over. It makes that old cat’s day.
He opens up his mouth and drinks as I just dream and sway
then turn to open my mouth, too, and see how kisses feel
when they are given mouth-to-mouth. It makes me almost reel.

But Hank the hired man catches me, sets me straight again,
and that’s the starting of my life as a paragon of sin!
Sinning’s not so bad at all. You can’t believe the preacher.
And it’s not so hard to do when you have a teacher.

Lessons started in the milking barn but ended in the loft.
The hired man got handsomer as he took his clothing off.
I think he liked me better, too, when I was in the buff 
for no matter how much more I showed, it never seemed enough.

We had a lovely time up there, the hired man and me.
As testament, now seven kids cluster round my knee.
The hired man’s beside me. As I sit and hold his hand,
he runs his fingers back and forth across my wedding band.

The old gray cat’s still happy, for sometimes he still gets lucky
when I’m distracted in the milking ’cause my husband’s feeling plucky.
Married life is lovely. We’re happy, him and me.
We are paragons of loving for perpetuity. 

 

The prompt today is “paragon.”

The Reveal

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The Reveal

Even when she’s in the buff,
he feels she’s not revealed enough.
He wants to know her heart and soul—
to know her entire being, his goal.
But, alas, she cannot do it.
If she does, she knows she’ll rue it.
Much as she loves a certain sir,
there is a certain part of her
that must remain a mystery.
For in this maiden’s history
are other suitors it behooved
to have her secrets all removed.
But when she revealed it all,
one by one, they did not call.
And thus she learned a maiden’s rule:
Men are fickle. Men are cruel.
Lest you be put up on a shelf,
keep parts of you safe in your self.
To keep him interested in your stuff,
Most of you is just enough.

 

 

 

The prompt today was “buff.”

The Subtle Art of Love’s Debate

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The Subtle Art of Love’s Debate

If you want true love to be your fate,
heed the advice I here relate:
the subtle art of love’s debate
requires words that resonate—
that tease and lure and serve as bait—
that charm as well as educate.

Many a lover learned too late
that loneliness would be his fate
because what he chose to relate
in one fell swoop on a first date
seemed only to exacerbate
or even worse to detonate.

Suitors, weigh your words inside
before you choose to rage or chide.
To stroll love’s pathway, walk the walk.
Take time to listen as well as talk.
Your questions will win you more hearts
than trying to display your smarts.

The greater part of conversation
lies not within one’s recitation.
Instead of gross bombacity,
express your curiosity.
Love plans require less machination.
Just greet her words with fascination.

 

 

The prompt today was detonate.

Saying It with Flowers

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“Violets contain ionone, which short-circuits our sense of smell.  The flower continues to exude its fragrance, but we lose the ability to smell it.  Wait a minute or two, and its smell will blare again. Then it will fade again, and so on.”
                                       — Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses

“Violets” jdb photo 2017


Saying It with Flowers

A lovely gesture, the violets—
but their scent  vanished
before you walked out the door.
“It will come back,” you promised.
And so it did, that sweet aroma,
radiating from the deep heart of the flowers
for brief moments before
vanishing again—
coming and going with a greater regularity
than your coming and your going.

“There is a scientific cause for this,”
you noted, ” The fragrance is still there,
but we just lose our ability to smell it.
It will come back again.”
And you were right.  
I could count upon it’s reappearance—
the mystery of its coming
and its going solved,
unlike your final exit
or why, when I requested
forget me nots,
violets are what 
you gave.

“Forget Me Nots” image from internet

The prompt today was “radiate.”