Category Archives: Love poem

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

Broken Hearted

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Broken Hearted

My heart’s not fully functioning. Its working parts are rusted.
With all life’s empty promises it has become encrusted.
Friends tell me it’s been out-of-use and just needs to be dusted,
but so far no one’s come along that I feel can be trusted.
The truth is, it has been too long since I have truly lusted,
and so although they say that my heart’s just unadjusted,
I’m pretty sure the truth of it is that it must be busted.

Fiction, folks.  Really. The prompt word today was encrusted.

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.

Loophole

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Loophole

Although he was the man for her—the one that she adored,
there was a loophole in their love affair, a clause in their accord.
So while into their union all her energies she poured,
feathering her true love’s nest, he wandered and explored.

She scraped windows with razor blades and scoured the kitchen floor
as he was off adventuring, in search of fresh amor.
It seemed for him their love affair was simply a temporal
exercise of pleasure genitalial and clitoral.

So as she labored, scrubbing at their tabletops and flooring,
he was engaged in other tasks of nightclubbing and whoring.
Their end was as you might predict. Her life became a bore,
so she exercised her loophole and threw him out the door!

The prompt today was loophole.

Torn Love

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Torn Love

Still standing close,
each on our own side of this terrible rending,
how can we see things so differently?
This little flap of skin
you keep pulling open
wants to close.

This is how cancers start—
this worrying and worrying of an old injury.
My darling. Leave it alone
and let us heal.
This is only a biopsy
of our changed love affair.

If it is cut out of us,
it will be by your decision;
and no number of late-night arguments
will ever change that fact.
What you need to remember
the next morning,
you will remember.

If it were up to me,
we would still be friends,
but if you need an enemy
to console you in your actions,
I guess I must be that too.
I always was a figment
of your imagination.
Believe that
if it makes this easier for you.

II

Cicatrix

I know better than you
what lies buried under
my healed-over self.

The raised part of me
grown to protect the wound
creates this distance
that I once warned you of.

I need to thicken that part of me
where part of you remains,
and if for this time you gasp for air,
it is my thick skin growing over you,
like an orb spider winding you in my web

until you become
the one in me hidden so deep
that even you
believe you’ve disappeared.

 

Yes, another reprint of a poem from over four years ago. The prompt today was torn.

Spendthrift

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Spendthrift

Bliss can be a private treasure,
a thing of dreams and mist.
Not all worldly pleasure
 is within a lover’s tryst.

I exist in silence­­—
hidden from gross eyes
until an instant ambush
rocks me in surprise.

Pierces all my “shouldn’ts,”
spends my hoarded dimes,
melts my frozen assets
saved for future times.

We dare not look too closely,
lest we see adventure’s end.
If we knew what came of it,
we’d doubtless never spend.

We cannot live for endings
lest the story never start,
for all that lives in memory
is paid for by the heart.

The prompt today is bliss.

The Taste of Love

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The Taste of Love

If love were a savor, a flavor or a taste,
a sauce or certain gravy, a marinade or paste,
Cupid could write a menu and we could order in
with romance as an appetizer, sealed up in a tin.
We could order lovers as others order food
according to our appetite, according to our mood.
I’d start out with Greek salad to titillate my palate.
Then move on to fresh lobsters beaten with a mallet.
A juicy steak would be served next with T-bone still inside.
I’d savor all the tender flesh with French fries on the side.
Dessert would be rich chocolate cake washed down with ginseng float
to make it slide so smoothly, smoothly down my throat.
There would be no tears, dear, and not one broken heart
if love came from a menu, to order à la carte.

 

Wit and the Art of Courtship

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Wit and the Art of Courtship

I simply do not care a whit
so long as you have brains and wit
whether you have looks or fame,
degreed initials by your name,
yachts, mansions or limousines.
These things are surely not the means
to win my heart and claim my hand.
I would not wear a wedding band
for cash or notoriety.
It must be given you for free.
If our minds have found a fit,
my heart will go along with it.

 

The prompt today was witty.

Foreshadowing

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Foreshadowing

Why does the loveliest flower have the sharpest thorn
so you had to pay the tariff of young flesh pierced and torn
by the most splendid ornament that you had ever worn
as he clasped you to the music of the saxophone and horn?
It’s been true each day you’ve lived, was true when you were born,
and your father brought fresh roses—your bedside to adorn.
And it will go on being true on that future morn
when roses will be carried by those saddened and forlorn
as they place your ashes where you’ve asked that they be borne:
back to that same rose bush that so long ago was shorn
of the roses that you carried when your wedding vows were sworn.

 

 

The prompt today is thorny.