Tag Archives: Love poem

Craig’s List Confessional

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Earlier today, I published a poem and at the end, left a pile of unused words that were free for the taking.  Christine Goodnough rifled through them and came up with this poem, then left a free-for-the-taking list of unused words of her own, leaving a link to my refuse pile as well.  I have dipped into each bunch of words again and used them all in the below poem, with the exception of the few left at the end that I pass on to any reader willing to make use of them in a poem.  You’ll find our combined leftovers at the end of my poem and a link to to Christine’s poem above

 Craig’s  List Confessional

I’d like a mirror so I can see
if I display felicity
when someone whispers in my ear
the name of one I once held dear.

I know not what my heart may feel,
what passions I might dare repeal
now that my head is ruling me
instead of love for somebody

so long departed––no longer here
for so many a long-lost year.
If I could paint a picture of
the countenance of long-lost love

in monotone or multi-tones,
in stereo or  monophones,
I hesitate to admit that
I fear the portrait might fall flat.

How often it has been  my ploy
to act withdrawn or bored or coy,
as though the long-lapsed love I bore
is what steers my grieving core.

But, in truth, duplicity
is what in all simplicity
guides my actions and my thought
and turns me into love’s robot.

With paint cans colored various hues,
why do I always choose the blues,
rebuffing each potential woo
and dropping out of courtship’s queue?

And so, if love is not a ruse––
a mere excuse for whom to choose,
I stand here gawking, open wide,
with no place left in which to hide.

Respectability’s passe,
and pride too dear a price to pay;
for staying safe in grief’s tight room
is burial before the tomb.

And so my dear, this poem you view?
Pretend that it’s addressed to you
and join me in complicity.
Perhaps shared words can set us free.

I’m not a girl.  You are no boy.
This poem is not a word-stuffed toy.
Should you respond with words that match,
it’s possible that we will catch

another chance to reach and choose
and maybe this time we won’t lose
the golden ring that does not bind.
This time we may find love is kind!


Okay, I dug deeply into Christine’s leftovers and rifled through mine as well.  This is what is left in the poetic grab bag.  Can anyone make use of the rest of our cast-offs?  Here is what is left to you: 

ooze booze cruise who’s whose choose lose  news pews poos cues sues twos  woos youse 
doozie floozie twozie boo  goo hue loo moo new poo   sue soo sioux too to you  What a spectacle! not respectable  

 

Staircase

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Staircase

I really did not mean to stare
when I saw you standing there,
but there was sunlight in your hair.
It was tangled. Your feet were bare.
It was a lovely sight and rare
as, seemingly without a care,
you stood above me on the stair.
And though I wished to, I didn’t dare
climb up to see how you might fare.

Instead, my wretched form I bore
down the staircase and out the door.
Since then, you are that thing of lore
that resides within my core.
I still remember what you wore.
I lie awake. I pace the floor––
trying nightly to restore
at one, at two, at three, at four––
the vision of you one time more.

I cannot work. I cannot eat.
I see your hair the hue of wheat,
your wrinkled dress, your naked feet,
and cannot help but feel defeat;
because even in ardor’s heat,
my courage to ascend and greet
thee, and to make my life replete,
never ascends above your street,
never accomplishes the feat.

And that is why I’m in your hall
wondering if I have the gall
to stand up brave and sure and tall
and ring your doorbell––to make the call.
I put my ear against your wall,
but I can hear no sound at all.
Indecision casts its gloomy pall.
I hesitate. I pause. I stall.
I do not shoot. I bounce the ball.

Though all my fears I seek to quell,
my words are prisoners in a cell,
and though I have rehearsed them well
and have the key to where they dwell,
my thoughts of what to say won’t gel.
I stand here in my private Hell.
A deathly dirge begins to knell.
I raise my hand. I ring the bell
and steel myself––this tale to tell.

 

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/stairway/

Your Soft Voice Fills the World: NaPoWriMo 2016, Day 30

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I don’t usually credit photographs, but all photographs on my blog are taken by me. The very few exceptions will be noted.


For the last poem of the month for NaPoWriMo, we were asked to find a poem in a language we do not know and to write a “translation” based on what we think it means.  I chose a poem by an Italian 16th century poet.  His name and poem are printed below my poem, which is:

Your Soft Voice Fills the World

Your soft voice fills the world
and causes the fronds to tremble.
Oh Laura, my long love, even the trees laugh
as they spread their green blanket over my vagabond angel.
Sing your song for me
as you ride eastward
so I may hear it wherever I go.
When you speak in the night,
it resounds in the heavens.
If you want to be queen, be queen of my heart.
Our love endures in the mountains,
oh beautiful vagrant of the skies.
Both you and your words live within me.
In the end, they will sustain me like a fine cuisine.


Here is the original poem:

Ecco mormorar l’onde
Torquato Tasso (1544-1595)

Ecco mormorar l’onde,
E tremolar le fronde
A l’aura mattutina, e gli arboscelli,
E sovra i verdi rami i vaghi augelli
Cantar soavemente,
E rider l’Oriente;
Ecco già l’alba appare,
E si specchia nel mare,
E rasserena il cielo,
E le campagne imperla il dolce gelo,
E gli alti monti indora:
O bella e vaga Aurora,
L’aura è tua messaggera, e tu de l’aura
Ch’ogni arso cor ristaura.

Originally, I translated the last two lines as:

The smoke of your words lives within me.
In the end, I will eat them like fine cuisine.

I loved those two images, but they seemed not to go with each other
or with the rest of the poem, so I changed them.

Here is a real translation of the poem:

 

Now the waves murmur
And the boughs and the shrubs tremble
in the morning breeze,
And on the green branches the pleasant birds
Sing softly
And the east smiles;
Now dawn already appears
And mirrors herself in the sea,
And makes the sky serene,
And the gentle frost impearls the fields
And gilds the high mountains:
O beautiful and gracious Aurora,
The breeze is your messenger, and you the breeze’s
Which revives each burnt-out heart.

 

http://www.napowrimo.net/day-thirty-2/

Borrowed Love Poem

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Ha!!!! Borrowed?  Perfect.  I am borrowing the poem I wrote today for NaPoWriMo to use for my WordPress Daily Post as well.  You can find it here: https://judydykstrabrown.com/2016/04/24/after-the-honeymoon/

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/borrowed/

After the Honeymoon

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Today’s NaPoWriMo Prompt was to write a “mix-and-match” poem in which you mingle fancy,  poetic vocabulary with distinctly un-fancy words.

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After the Honeymoon

Oh my dear,
caught in this star-studded cowboy boot world,
I love you more than an Oreo cookie,
more than bubble gum
or a dill pickle.
You are a full gas tank and my shoelaces.
You are both what keeps me going
and what I am reaching out for—
my goal and trophy rolled into one.
You are my ironing board and my blender—
what churns me up and straightens me out.
Everything in the world is caught up in you.

It is flowering, our ordinary world.
peanut butter sandwiches
and corned beef hash
are surrounded by rosebuds,
soaring heavenward in sartorial bliss.
The sewing machine is holy
and our Dodge truck dreamlike.
The fanciful and practical
are shuffled in our dream world
like cards at a poker table.
A washcloth and a comb soar heavenward.
Birdsong becomes a phonograph needle,
caught in its groove.
Verdant is the garden hose–
pulsating with a new vibrancy.

If I am a tax form, you are my pencil.
You are diaphanous in your kitchen apron,
a fairy in blue jeans.
I could sing an ode to your toothbrush.
If I took a measuring stick to our love,
the world’s breath would be bated,
waiting for the result.
Birdsong would issue from the teakettle
to chorus the announcement.

For oh, my love, our passion is a hammer.
A scythe that slices through the problems of the world:
the shopping lists and the crabgrass.

Love vaporizes our petty problems––
the broken dishwasher
and the broken fingernail––
leaving my bride, my fairy princess.
My pencil sharpener.
The trimmer of my wick,
the cooker of my sausage.

My dear, I am turgid in thy love.
You are what wrenches my heart
and nails shut the door
of every misgiving I might have had.
You are mustard to my sauerkraut,
pastrami to my rye.
Love in a Ziplock bag might seem less fairylike,
blander than white bread
and more Sunday School than magical;
but, my little zucchini,
my Dove bar and my Orange Crush,
you are still my camellia and my rose.

I think of you under lindens,
your footsteps filled with magnolia petals
and your cook pot full of stardust.
Heaven resides in our walkup flat, my dear,
and I pulsate every day
with the memory of that honeymoon
which was only our penultimate dream—
leading up to the chock-a-block,
stuffed turkey with all the trimmings,
overflowing Christmas stocking,
burst balloon filled with confetti,
blissful rest of that conjoined life
that with every morning alarm clock
will spill over us again
like a freshly split piñata.

If you are curious, here is the list of words I made up to use before I wrote the poem:

bated, penultimate, scintillating, vaporous, tyrolean, fragile, throbbing, majestic, cloud, magical, fragile, fairylike, vaporous, birdsong, flowering, verdant, diaphanous, star-studded,dreamlike, rose strewn, elfin, birdsong, Zephyrus, pulsating, silence, hush, tra la la, turgid, verdant, rosebuds, camellias, lindens, pastoral, heavenward, pulsating, sartorial.

gas tank, hammer, shopping list, dog food, can opener, wrench, pillow slip, garden hose, scrub brush, dishwasher, washcloth, comb, Ziplock bag, pencil, phonograph needle, emery board, shoelace, eyelash, curtain rod, stapler, bubble gum, Oreo cookie, peanut butter, corned beef sandwich , sauerkraut, blander, fingernail clippers, measuring stick, pencil sharpener, gas tank, shoe polish, Dodge truck, table saw, ski boot, cowboy boot, bra strap, ironing board, dill pickle, 

http://www.napowrimo.net/day-twenty-four-2/

Clarity: Words After an Armistice

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Words After an Armistice

I want to make this perfectly clear.
We are not close just because we are near.
There has to be more than proximity for
my heart to open its almost closed door.

Say something sweet to me. Say something rare.
I do not feel loved just because you are there
across a room that is filled up with things.
You must think of something and give your thoughts wings.

Speak playful words that will prompt words from me.
Then volley them back to me. Don’t let thoughts “be”
without giving them air to live in and grow
so they banish these shadows and fan fire’s glow.

Passion’s not something for us to remember.
It’s better a constantly glowing live ember.
Get up from your chair. Give that remote a miss
and speak to me now with a word or a kiss.

Remove my hands from the keyboard and say,
“Let’s give the internet rest for a day.”
Take me to water and take me to sand.
Take off my shoes and take hold of my hand.

Walk me to tide swell and gull cry and light.
Say you’ve forgotten our last brittle fight.
Banish bad thoughts in the now and the here
so I can feel close just because you are near.

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/06/20/fowc-with-fandango-almost/

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/clarity/

Condensed Love Story

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Condensed Love Story

New love blogs extreme attraction.
Experience posts a retraction.

The prompt is to write about love, but to keep it short!
https://lynnmlovewords.wordpress.com/2016/02/07/love-nudge-competition/

The Moon is Full and Waiting

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The Moon is Full and Waiting

The moon is full and waiting,
but the night is full of chill,
though my true love expects me
over yonder hill.
His ardent calls invite me
to join him for the night,
and yet I dread the cold cold wind
and the night air’s bite.
If I were only twenty
I’d have no choice to make,
but I have guests arriving
and sweet bites yet to bake.

My true love lies waiting
over yonder hill,
but he’ll return another night.
I’m confident he will.
For he has no other
to overlook his flaws:
the roughness of his ardor,
the power of his jaws.
His embrace often bruises,
though this is not his intent.
In the excess of his ardor,
only tenderness is meant.

The warm cave of our meeting
still carves out yonder hill,
but tonight I will not join him.
It may be I never will.
Tomorrow night the full moon
will partially be spent,
and perhaps by next month’s equal,
I will once more not relent.
Perhaps I’ll find another
closer to my kind,
though an equal to his passion
I’m unlikely to find.

A mild wind blows the clouds away
to clear the shrouded moon.
My guests will be arriving.
I know it will be soon.
I stir in leavening powder.
I stir in heavy cream.
Across the hand I stir with
falls the moon’s broad beam.
I drop the spoon and go again
to open up the door.
I hear the gentle song of wind,
my lover’s beckoning roar.

I answer with a beat of blood.
A spasm in my thigh
invites me to be climbing
over distant hill and high.
The crumbs fall from my fingers
as I run into the night.
I do not feel the bruising stones
or the wind’s cold bite.
My lover calls me onward,
and once again I go.
For when the full moon calls me,
not once have I said no.

 

 

IMG_0562Both of these photos were taken on Christmas Eve, 2015, from my sister’s back terrace in Peoria, Arizona.

The Prompt: Earworm––Write whatever you normally write about, and weave in a book quote, film quote, or song lyric that’s been sticking with you this week. (The song lyric I was inspired by was “Baby it’s cold outside,” but when I finished, it had no actual place in the poem other than to be its inspiration.) https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/earworm-2/

Washing Up

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https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/it-builds-character/

Washing Up

The churning water brings them up.
The grounds of coffee in the cup
rise like saints to water’s top
while water runs, they do not stop.

I read their shapes like tea leaves now.
I see the future but know not how.
They swirl and change, revealing lives––
swarm like hornets from their hives.

The one I wait for comes unstuck,
careening towards his future luck.
The one that’s me caught in an eddy,
stuck for now, but holding steady.

Other remnants of finished meals––
carrot shards, potato peels––
rise up and circle, forming dreams.
Reality, or so it seems.

I see a heart and charm and lies,
a future lover in disguise,
a plane, a knoll, a tree-lined path,
a woman bound in senseless wrath.

She sends out waves that push you here––
the very thing that she most fears.
I know not who or where you are.
Are you near or are you far?

As all goes rushing down the drain,
I feel a sense of loss and pain.
And so I fill the sink again.
Will I see you one time more,
or was my vision only lore?

This poem was inspired by a comment chain on  Jane Basil’s blog. In reply to my last comment, she wrote:”You have just inspired me. When I read your comment I thought about the odd concepts writers come up with. If we didn’t think up strange plots, what would we write about? The answer came in a flash: washing up. We could write about washing up, or hanging curtains, or eating toast. I’m off to try to write a poem about washing up. Would writing about mundane activities make me boring,or odd? And is there something wrong with my thought processes?” I wrote back telling her I’d write a poem about washing up as well. This is mine and HERE is hers!

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/it-builds-character/

New World Miracle: NaPoWriMo 2015, Day 9

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New World Miracle2 New World Miracle3

Today’s prompt is to write a visual poem.  This is one I tried to publish earlier this year when WordPress was not accepting pingbacks, so perhaps not many have seen it, and certainly not in this form, as when I published it, it was all evened out into regular stanzas by the blog formatting.  It occurred to me to save it in jpeg and treat the pages as photographs and that seems to have worked.

http://www.napowrimo.net/participants-sites/