Tag Archives: poem about the end of a love affair

“I Keep Your Promise” for “Cracking Open the Content Time Capsule”

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I Keep Your Promise

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I Keep Your Promise

Rain beats a riff on the back window
as I drive away from your familiar
promises, like lyrics of a worn-out song.
“Never again,” is made true this time,
my choice instead of yours.

I was the house
you entered
but never
spread out in—
the rumpus room
battered with misuse—
a refrigerator
filled with carry-out and cartons
with their “use by” dates all lapsed.

I was the melody
to that false chord
you loved to strike,
proud in your outlaw status—
that anchor that held your music to the page.

I see its strains floating after me,
as though that part of you
knows what it will miss
and even now
is trying to be found.

 

“Sharp Ending”” For dVerse Poets

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Painting by Georgia O’Keefe

Sharp Ending

My sharp edges here revealed
are products of wounds left unhealed
by one once foremost in my heart,
accepted from the very start,
who recently reversed direction
and withdrew the fond affection
he’d professed for countless years,
now classified as in arrears.

The corner streetlamp has lost its light,
like that affection, now out of sight,
circling around its plight
and bleeding scarlet in the night.

The dearest love is thus allowed
to hide itself behind a cloud
that provides the night’s collusion
in this act of dissolution

In which I have not played a part,
except for furnishing the heart
that you have left with sharpened edges
from those broken former pledges
created not from knife or swords,
but rather from those stabbing words
with which you faded out of sight
on that rainy autumn night

when you gave a snort and cough,
and then decreed I should fuck off!
Hardly a kind parting word,
but like the rest of you––absurd!!!

oops.. the timeline for posting this ended while I was writing it, so here it is for 

Open Link Night

 

 

“Frozen,” for dVerse Poets

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Image copied from dVerse Poets prompt

>Frozen<

Ice crystals clung to the naked branches like frozen fireworks,
their shafts capturing sunlight that outlined their million frozen rays.
It was like walking through a crystalline otherworld,
and she avoided brushing branches wih her shoulders,
not wanting to disturb nature’s artistry.

So it was with her memories of him.
The truth of their parting could not be allowed
to brush off their perfect beginning,
now frozen  forever in her mind.

for dVerse Poets

Ending: Feb 12, 2023

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Ending

You offer reassurances and try to take my hand
as we journey homeward, shuffling through the sand.
Your words imply condolence, but they are not sincere.
Your thoughts I know are far away, although you hover near.

I consign our love to memory, safe and tightly curled,
for I know your next love waits for you out there in the world.
I no longer seek your favor and would rather you depart.
I do not crave your presence when I do not have your heart.

 

Prompt words today are: sand, shuffle, condolences, imply, favor.

Breakup Breakdown, for Wordle 569

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Breakup Breakdown

My tenacious efforts to climb that hard rock face
of the tower of your indifference has brought me great disgrace.

I regret my wasted journey  to regain your love.
What can’t be saved below can’t be re-won above.

My thoughts are swarming wildly like bees around their hive.
They crack my shell of reason. I’ve no wish to be alive.

Though I present a normal face, I’m not sane at all.
I grit my teeth and curl my broken body in a ball.

And though this seems to demonstrate that I am quite agile,
actually, it protects a heart that is most fragile.

For the Sunday Whirl Wordle 569 prompt words are: regret wasted journey tenacious bees agile rocking climb crack teeth present face. Photo and brooch by jdb.

And…it’s fiction, Dolly!!!!

So Long, Marianne! (Tribute to Leonard Cohen)

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         So Long, Marianne!

Mmmmm, he said, I think I need
Another kiss and then, indeed,
Require a hug to go with it.
I like the way that our lips fit.
And if you choose to give me none,
Neither will I give you one!
No love is won by those found lacking
Expertise in hugs and smacking.

                                                                                                 –Judy Dykstra-Brown

 

Murisopsis’s Scavenger Hunt Prompt at Looking at Names is to write an acrostic poem for Marianne.

Pink Lights and Tequila

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Pink Lights and Tequila

She met him in a barroom. His first contact was a wink,
and their time of courtship was over in a blink.
She didn’t note his platitudes and chauvinistic thinking.
That’s what comes from being wooed when a girl’s been drinking.
The impact of tequila shots has done in more than one girl,
making one who’s ordinary seem to be a fun girl.

A current ran between them. Rainbows issued from the lights,
giving a pink glow to cheeks and lower sights.
Thus did soft lights and alcohol add to their delight.
She seemed to him a princess. He seemed to be her knight.
They wed just six months later and divorced within a year.
Sparks ignited in the tavern fizzle out in life, I fear.

Prompts today are rainbow, impact, platitude, current, chauvinist and pink.

How to Mend a Broken Heart (For Stream of Consciousness Saturday)

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How to Mend a Broken Heart

Pop a really big bowl of popcorn.
Don’t think of calories.
Just ignore the old maids in the bottom––
this is not a fortune-telling experience.
Lots of butter.

Locate chocolate.
If none is to be found,
there is likely a 7-11 within driving distance
no matter where you happen to be.
Get the biggest bar.
A bite of popcorn, then a bite of chocolate.

Locate an old Ma and Pa Kettle movie somewhere online and watch it.
Ma Kettle is you in ten years if your love affair had worked out.
Pa Kettle is who your lover would have turned into.

Find an old Sophia Loren movie online and watch it.
Sophia Loren is who you are now.
Don’t worry about the popcorn.
Sophia Loren wouldn’t.

Imagine Paul Newman eating popcorn
off your bare back.
Flip over.
Flash on making love to Pa Kettle.
Quickly flash back to Paul Newman
now eating popcorn off your bare shoulder blade.

Imagine your ex in a movie theater
watching Paul Newman make love to you
up there on the big screen.
Don’t worry about who your ex is with.

Well, maybe just one little peek.

Your ex is with Ma Kettle!

(If you don’t know who Ma and Pa Kettle are, go HERE.)

The prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “How?”

Tactical Failure

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Tactical Failure

Cream whipped up frothy as air smothering chocolate cake—
how much more temptation is my rival going to make?
She knows that my true love is fond of skinny hips,
and yet she makes confections she knows will tempt my lips.

Tiny marzipan cherries adorn the cookies that
she knows that I will not resist and that they’ll make me fat.
She wants to exacerbate a rift she knows is there
ever since as a surprise I cut my knee-length hair.

His complaints resounded over the neighborhood.
Everyone heard his distress, so I’m sure she could
as she passed by on the sidewalk, walking very slow
on her way to the juke joint where they both liked to go.

I know she had designs on him for the very next day
she brought three dozen cookies lined up neatly on a tray.
They were for consolation for she knew we were in trouble,
and so she baked me cookies and made the frosting double.

Thus did this vixen hasten my love affair’s demise
by appealing to my weakness and doubling my size.
And thus because her tactics seemed so perfectly to work,
I wound up with a sweet life while she would up with a jerk! 

Prompts today are frothy as air, exacerbate, marzipan, resound and joint.

Cruel Games

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Cruel Games

Tonight I am impervious to your charming lies.
They float like a conglomerate behind your velvet eyes.
Save your naughty bedroom tricks for your other hotties.
They hide like buried hatchets under buried bodies—
taloned falcons you disguise as the grip of love,
but I know the difference between raptor and dove.
Cruel actions are not love just because you name them so.
For me love is warm currents and not the hidden undertow.
The game you play may be enough for your other fools,
but the game of love I crave is played by other rules.

 

Prompt words today are conglomerate, impervious, tonight and bury hatchets under buried bodies. Image by Parker Gibbons on Unsplash.