Tag Archives: Love poem

Unmasked

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Unmasked

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

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to act withdrawn or bored or coy,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!

For Fandango’s Flash Fiction Challenge #228

This is actually a poem I wrote seven years ago but for some reason, your photo reminds me of it so I changed the name and I’m reprinting it here. Is that cheating???

Reclaimed Words, For the Sunday Whirl Wordle 611

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Reclaimed Words

I fall victim to your shallow spell,
shattered by your drifting gaze
that catches on me, then drifts on,
to mingle with the gathering haze.

The damp roils in and sunlight dims,
night mingling with the fading day.
The shattered call of evening birds
echo and then fade away.

When I call out, words split in two,
spilling their meaning to the sand.
When I attempt to gather them,
they fall again from twitching hand.

As you retreat, your power fades
and I reclaim each scattered word,
change their order and intent
into phrases less absurd.

Words once wasted assume power
directed at another ear.
Amazing how the selfsame words
gain power with a loved one near.

 

For The Sunday Whirl: Wordle 611 the words are: mingled dim damp shallow spell gaze drifts shattered call twitch words split

Road Map as Quatrains

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I answered a prompt for a quatrain about maps on dVerse by submitting a poem I’d written entitled “Roadmaps.” Although no one objected, it bothered me that I’d just fulfilled half of the prompt, so I decided to transform the poem into three quatrains.  It only meant adding  a few words to each stanza. Here is the rewrite. I don’t know if I like it better, but at least it follows all the rules:

Road Map

I’m held captive by your wrinkles, dear, enraptured by your ripples.
I love your freckles and your moles and all of nature’s stipples.
They are sacred landmarks. When I find one that is new,
I give thanks to nature for adding more of you.

Sometimes, dear, with the dark night around us rich and deep,
my mind goes on a walkabout as you lie asleep.
The road map of your body is the terrain that I pace—
the slight knolls and the gullies and your face’s fragile lace.

Some folks bemoan the changes that nature brings about,
and they bring a different beauty. It is true, without a doubt.
But as I trace each special feature of your body and your face,
I am sure that nature’s carving instills a deeper grace.

To read the original poem go HERE. Which do you prefer? This illustration and the original poem are from my adult coloring book entitled When Old Dames Get Together and Other Confessions of a Ripe Old Age. Available from Amazon HERE.

 

For the dVerse Poets prompt. Go HERE to read other poems to this prompt.

 

Day and Night, For Wordle 603

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Day and Night

Every night when you emerge to climb down from your heart
and shed your daily mystery, you become a part
of what we were before they clashed—my daily life and yours—
before I rubbed against your nerves  and you shut certain doors.
The very night bows down to gather round the slivered moon,
arched lighter on the verge of it, celebrating June.
You forsake your manly bearing and go against your grain,
show flashes of your tenderness that I’ve sought out in vain.
This is our nightly honeymoon that makes the day a breeze,
limbering up the stiffness and thawing out the freeze.

For The Sunday Whirl Wordle 603 the prompts are: heart you emerge night climb bow grain mystery clash flashes verge bearing The photo is of Rosemary and Jim, both now sadly departed. They were not a couple but I love this photo and thought it formed a good illustration for the poem.

Love Story After Rain, for NaPoWriMo 2023, Day 25 and Wordle 319

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Love Story After Rain

If I had a penny for each
of all my thoughts of you,
my dear, I’d buy us lollipops
for one hand,
yellow tulips for the other

and as the rainbows disappear,
replaced by brighter clouds,
stay near—
together
as we have been wont to do,

everybody else
disappearing
except us,
your sunshine drying
up the puddles.

Do not seek to join us,
world,
We are enough—
sticky-tongued

with pollen
clinging
to our lips and fingers,
silly grins.

Love story after rain.

For Wordle 319 the prompt words are: sunshine lollipops rainbows disappear join stay near penny together brighter cloud everybody

Also, for NaPoWriMo, the prompt challenges us to write a love poem, one that names at least one flower, contains one parenthetical statement, and in which at least some lines break in unusual places.

Conjuring

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Conjuring

You are my homing pigeon, my wise old owl and dove.
My balsam for the pains of life, a well-remembered love.
Your presence is reality. It does not deviate.
You are a special part of life I can’t eradicate.
I breathe your name into the night and it draws you here.
Equal parts of holy and risque, you hover near.
And although your presence lasts mere minutes at a time,
it is time enough to prompt this laudatory rhyme!

 

Prompt words today are risque, name, balsam, deviate, reality and pigeon.

Quartets of Memory

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Quartets of Memory

To what extent
do you lament
losing the blush
of teenage crush?

Tease and chuckle,
tight-gripped knuckle,
that challenge of
teenage love—

to cultivate
a future mate—
dawdling where
a certain stare

might meet with yours.
These sweet amors
left in the past,
nonetheless last.

Some afternoons
listening to tunes
of a past kind,
they come to mind.

 

Prompt words today are knuckle, challenge, lament, cultivate, dawdle. Image by Eric Krull on Unsplash.

His Hopes: Love Messages

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His Hopes: Love Messages

Long after sleep is over and you’ve made your morn’s retreat,
I find an image of your kiss pressed into my sheet.
It summarizes passion and the pounding beat
of two dazzled lovers united in their heat.
I gently kiss your absent lips and smooth the cover neat,
hoping that tonight you will return for a repeat.

 

Prompt words today are sleep, summarize, dazzle, beat, lipstick.

First Caress

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First Caress

Like that exquisite tension between first caress
and the dropping of shoe and removal of dress.

Like that mellow first stirring of love and desire
that creates a friction that flares into fire.

Appetites that merit no dish or no spoon
enjoyed under covers and the light of the moon.

Each generation discovers anew
That first caress and the drop of a shoe.

 

Prompt words today are exquisite, tension, merit, desire, generation, mellow.

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's avatarlifelessons - 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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