Tag 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

Rich Harvest

© Sharon Knight
I saw this photo by Sharon Knight on Sascha Darlington’s blog and knew it was the perfect photo for this poem as well.  Thanks to both Sharon Knight and Sascha as well as dVerse poets, who sponsored this prompt. Like Sharon Knight, I grew up in the midwest and this photo could easily have been taken in my home state of South Dakota, a bit before the harvest time described in my poem.

Details from retablo “The Gleaners.” Painting by Anna O’Neglia, retablo and photo by jdb (Click on any photo to enlarge all)

Rich Harvest

The night that we brought in the wheat,
our weeks of labor now complete,
we raised our voices, beat our feet,
and in that stifling prairie heat,
weary and arm-sore, yet replete
with satisfaction for jobs well-done
earned in the dust and chaff and sun,
we ceased our labors and had some fun.

Hank gave the prim schoolteacher a treat
by lifting her from her safe seat
to move her to the fiddler’s beat.
Soon, her hairpins met defeat,
her wild hair anything but neat,
 and Hank was heard to woo the miss
and then to plant a tender kiss.
She remembers all of this

now that their family’s complete
with Rita, Sarah, and little Pete.
Now every harvest, when you greet
each townsperson you chance to meet,
chances are they will repeat
how Hank brought in the wheat that year
and afterwards, conquered his fear
and dared to call the school marm, “dear.”

The prompt today is treat.

Torn Love

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.

The Taste of Love

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.

Exchanging Words on Little Santa Monica

photo by Georgia King


Exchanging Words On Little Santa Monica

There on that city avenue,
I watched you as I sipped my brew.
Not the woman you’d chosen to woo
as you read poetry so true,
so raw, so blunt, so rare and new,
the air around you turned to blue.
Your sad poems caressed and drew
us closer. All that motley crew.

For me, love was a new venue
that night I first set eyes on you,
but there was such a ballyhoo
around you, that you had no clue
that I had joined the retinue
of women waiting in your queue.
But as I left, oh yes, I knew.
My life took on a brighter hue.

And though you were far out of view,
your memory stuck to me like glue.
Thoughts of you both birthed and slew.
Our meeting was long overdue
that night I saw you in the pew—
there to hear the poems I grew
from words carefully chosen and few,
I drew you in by some voodoo.

Perhaps our muses conspired and blew
winds from exotic Xanadu
or Zanzibar or high Peru,
the air around us to imbue,
giving us the selfsame cue:
this is the lover meant for you,
your octoroon and kangaroo,
the heart you’ll break, the fat you’ll chew.

Of all words plucked from life’s rich stew,
the ones that I would never rue.
Never would they ring untrue.
Those words that, though we might redo them,
never could I overdo them.
The words I’d sought my whole life through.
The vow I’d renew and renew.
That one rare thing I’d finally do.

 

The prompt word today is continue. It is the first word I’ve ever found that has a rhyming word that begins with each letter in the alphabet! I discovered this without consulting Google or a rhyming dictionary, which I occasionally have to resort to when a word is especially hard to find enough rhymes for. I found 64 rhyming words. Still haven’t checked any dictionaries. They may have additional ones, but these are mine, all mine! The only rhyme that is repeated is the word “you,”

“The” Words: avenue ballyhoo blew blue boo (boo hoo) brew chew clue crew cue do (doo doo) drew due eschew ew few glue goo grew hew hue imbue issue Jew kangaroo Kew, knew  loo mew moo new  overdo  overdue Peru pew phew poo queue redo renew retinue rue screw shrew slew stew sue through true undo untrue  venue view vindaloo voodoo whew woo Xanadu you zoo

 

The prompt word today is continue.

Enamoured

This poem was written making use of only the letters of the word enamoured, which was the prompt word for today.

 

Enamoured

Mere man, mere dame,
a mean red moon.
A dream remade,
a mar, a dune.
Marooned and moored
and no end near.
Me enamoré. 
Me arrear.

(In Spanish, a”mar” is a sea or ocean, but “a mar” can also mean to love. “Me enamoreé“means “I fell in love.” “Me Arrear” can mean either “I got caught,” “drive me” or “Grab me.”  It also carries the connotation for me that the object of her affection’s love might be in arrears. “En arrear” can have that meaning in Spanish as well. Since I used the British spelling of the title word to increase my choices, I guess you could say this poem is trilingual. Comes in handy when limited in the consonants and vowels one can use.

First Lust

 

 jdbphotos (Click on any photo to enlarge all)

First Lust

When we were young, before love rusted,
how we pined and how we lusted.
We lived on love. So sure. Nonplussed.
As though we held a deed of trust
on those we kissed. We arched, they thrust,
our hearts pounding as though percussed.

We came home rumpled, dizzy, mussed—
our heads swirling, slightly concussed.
Our mothers warned. Our fathers fussed,
seeking to turn our dreams to dust.
Our hearts reeling in shamed disgust,
our faces flamed as they discussed.

And although we thought we must
pretend to listen, inside we cussed,
knowing their words to be unjust.
Within each throbbing teenage bust
beat a heart free of distrust,
bursting with love’s wanderlust.

Back there at our very starts,
as we were learning to use our hearts,
back when we thought they might combust,
our hearts were tender, without crust.
We gave them fully with no mistrust.
We thought the world of love was just.

 

 

The prompt word today was lust.

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.”