Tag Archives: Love poem

Wallpaper for Flashback Friday, Sept. 30, 2022

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When Fandango asked us to reblog a blog from the past, I had over 9,000 to choose from, and for some reason I chose this one.

For Fandango’s Flashback Friday, we are to repost a blog from the past.

lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown

DSC09880

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…

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The Elopement: Wordle 571 for The Sunday Whirl, Sept 25, 2022

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Elopement

The sky liquid amber and the hills mushroom brown,
we sail on love’s vapors right over the town.
Once we felt dirty, but now we feel free,
released from the rules learned at the knee
of parents who left us with nothing but scars
of guilt over kisses in back seats of cars.

We vow to forget all we’ve heard of their lies
as we flee solid earth to escape through the skies.
What was once key we admit has no power
as passion bursts out to bud and then flower.
Those flickers of guilt we shed as we fly,
leaving mere earth to soar up to the sky.

For The Sunday Whirl Wordle 571 the prompts are: mushrooms key liquid admit dirty felt flicks hear  amber solid  Image: Marc Chagall’s “Over the Town.”

Smiled At

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Smiled At

The effervescence of your smile
has me soaring mile on mile.
I’m tremulous within your bubble,
It’s elementary. I’m in trouble!

I travel on the lift of you,
billowy in glimmer’s hue.
Transparent from the very start
in what I carry within my heart.

It was as though, once trapped indoors, 
you opened in me all the doors.
And now I float out, high and free,
bearing your smile along with me.

 

Prompts today are effervescence, elementary, tremulous, indoor, glimmer, billowy.

Lalibela: For Sunday Whirl’s Wordle 568

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Lalibela

I kiss the map where memories lie in the vast stillness of the past.
Your broad laugh silenced so long ago that no remnants of it last.
What I had felt and hoped to see mirrored on your joyful face
was demonstrated as you drew me into our first long embrace.

Sparrows swoop those ancient halls where we loved and laughed and talked,
but only whispers of our love echo the chambers where we walked.
That holy place where we first kissed—the ancient pulpit that we found
buried deep within the earth—religious zeal gone underground.

Corridors carved from living stone that could not check the carver’s zeal
foretold my resolution to resist denying what I feel
so many long years afterwards, when lacking sense and reason,
I remember those short months when love bloomed out of season.

 

Prompt words for Sunday Whirl’s Wordle 568 are: sparrows vast stillness hope face silent check pulpit lack whisper kiss map

 

Tryst, for the Sunday Swirl Wordle 567

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Tryst

I try to breathe the mountains as I travel through the night.
The reaching arms of towering trees no terrors do ignite.

The growls of hidden creatures as I challenge their domain
build my determination and strengthen my disdain.

The moon and stars will light my way until the coming dawn.
No regrets erase my firm resolve to journey on.

My skin relays the message that relieves all my distress,
as it receives the comfort of the evening wind’s caress.

A whip-poor-will calls out to me from its perch above
that the very night protects me as I proceed toward my love.

 

Prompts for The Sunday Swirl Wordle 567 are: build challenge erase skin growl firm
night regrets until breathe mountains try

 

 

Belvedere

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Belvedere

Strolling through the belvedere at sunset, just with you,
I pretended that I’d brought you here for the uncanny view.

Yet I really formed a rapt audience of one.
You are the only view I seek when the day is done.

I’m just your part time lover, and yet I must confess
that when I see your line of jaw, your hair braid or your dress,

it catapults my heart into regions that are new.
I’d like to make a wallpaper of visions just of you

so that all the whole day long, whatever I might do,
I could live forever surrounded by your view.

 

Prompt words today are part time, Belvedere, catapult, wallpaper, audience and uncanny.

A belvedere or belvidere is an architectural structure sited to take advantage of a fine or scenic view. The term has been used both for rooms in the upper part of a building or structures on the roof, or a separate pavilion in a garden or park.  And, it is also a brand of Vodka!!!

She Passes By

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She Passes By

Each variation in your eyes
betrays their normal veiled disguise.

Wistfully they follow one
by whom you have been undone.

As they follow, hither and nigh
each time your former love walks by,

she who trampled on your heart
once more upsets the apple cart

and affection tumbles out
and draws you like a waterspout,

wistfully to tumble there,
your tender hopes high in the air.

But false illusions must fall to earth
where they discover their true worth
as they are trampled into earth.

Prompt words today are eyes, tender, trample, nigh, variation, wistfully.

Night and Day

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Night and Day

I memorize your face, your hair,
your breath white light upon cold air.
Hours pass like minutes while
I chart the borders of your smile.

A wisp of cloud, sliver of moon
slip behind the highest dune.
The stars have plans that drive the night
to plots that I will later write.

Fictions Imagined by me,
no match for their reality.
Then, sun rays sent to ban the night
obscure the moon and stars from sight.

A chiming bell is morning’s crime
dispelling pleasures most sublime,
but if I linger long, I might
survive the day to earn the night.

Prompts are: sliver breath sent plans hours minutes chime drive write light crime match for the Sunday Whirl Wordle 548

Shy Lover

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Shy Lover

Express the volume of my love? My dear, I cannot wait,
for I have pined for these long years just to elucidate
how my pulse rate elevates when you enter the room.
I’ve kept love in a reservoir, here in passion’s womb,

but now it’s time for it to swell and burst the gates of love.
The soaring of the arrow, the cooing of the dove,
the flowers and the chocolate will convey, perhaps
what has gone unsaid so long—a necessary lapse

for lips that do not know the way to say the things they long for—
what some men say in poetry or perhaps compose a song for—
I carry in my hands for you, hoping you’ll catch my drift
that my passion for you is expressed in every gift.

Prompt words are elucidate, pulse, reservoir, express and volume. The photo was taken by me at in kissing alley in Guanajuato. The legend is of lovers who could lean out from their balconies and kiss. Her father found out and there was a sad ending. If you want to read the supposed “true” story of this balcony, go HERE.

Maybe it is My Heart

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Maybe It Is My Heart

Maybe it is my heart I hear when I think I hear Coyotes.
Maybe it is my heart I hear in the croaking of the frogs.
Maybe it is my heart tap-tap-tapping on the window glass.
Maybe it is my heart walking across the rooftop.
Maybe it is my heart howling in the treetops.
Maybe it is my heart in the two long rumbles of thunder.
Maybe it is my heart in the three-minute violence of hail.
Maybe it is my heart in the rustle of the Redwood trees.
Maybe it is my heart in the weeping of the loon.
Maybe it is my heart in the quiet undulations of the reservoir
Maybe it is my heart that splits the water with the paddle.
Maybe it is my heart that reflects from the breast of the waves.
Maybe it is my heart that has found its own places
Maybe it is my heart that is looking for me.

 

This post came about because of a Facebook message from Linda Levy, a friend of many years who lives in Bonny Doon, California. When she saw news of my upcoming show entitled “The Poet’s Eye, the Artist’s Tongue,” she sent a photo of a piece we collaborated on when I was the curator of the Santa Cruz Mountains Art Center in Ben Lomond, CA. I used that title for a show that involved artists and poets collaborating on pieces. Either the artist showed the poet a work of art they had created and the poet wrote a poem to go along with it or the poet presented a poem for the artist to make a piece to go with. In this case, I gave her the poem and the illustration above is the cardboard and paper sculpture she made. The ripped-out pieces of poetry on the desk are the words of the poem above.

That show reoccured on a yearly basis for a number of years after I left and Linda assumed the curatorship. Can’t believe that was twenty years ago and SCMAC is still going strong. Long story short, when Jesus asked me to do a show with him in his gallery, since both of us are writers and artists, I thought the title would work well for our show, so I resurrected it. Thanks, Linda, for the memories.

Poem by jdb Sculpture  and photo by Linda Levy

Here is another photo of the lid of the box just sent to me by Linda: