Saturday, February 12, 2011

Valentines

True Romance

The choices we fall into for romance
Must be why they call the moon-touched lunatics.
We let all sense escape us, give in to chance
Seduced, junkies, into hunger for a fix
Belief, a bedfellow strange to reason's well-trod path,
In fairytale ever after lovers twain
Well-schooled, trained in logic, adept in math
Yet we shed it all to hop that mythic train
Expose our tender souls to cruel deceit
And maybe violence, maybe wounds that slowly kill
Yet we run into destruction, foreswear retreat
For the chance, the hope, the ecstasy, the thrill. 
 


poets' challenge of love
 
the challenge of love, ah clever poets sing 
bells of the ages like weddings' ring-bearers 
tending to the tender souls who challenge love. 

first there is awe and laughter 
first there is oh so sweet petals of 
eternal Spring 
first there is me boyo, me flicka, me enameradae 
first there is passion unmet in this measure before. 

I love like a mountain gale 
sweeping goats and dales and moonshine 
into camaradic array, like daffodils 
sun-shine through miraculous fields 
meeting you here where no two have quite met 
like this, to kiss, to touch, to taste, entwine blissful 
like none have done in all of the days of wo/man. 
seas of rapture sway and spray and rock us 
into unsung epic destiny. 
Yet love unwinds, 
unmakes us, 
ruins us for life. 

And life descends so empty 
on the drying seeds of 
now spent love. 


Be My Valentine


If the greatest virtue we can aspire to is love
And the greatest follies in our lives are due to love
And we can't cure ourselves of the pain and malady of love
But all sages exhort us just to love
And pure poison is generated by loss in love
And pure bliss is ours in lovely love
And what about those horrid beings we just can't love
And what about that horrid feeling of being unloved
So what in heaven/hell is love?


There is love that sends you dancing
into romantic lunacy 
that feels so right and free
There is love that burns so hot and cold
you never know
quite where you are
There is love that holds a whisper
in the corner of your mind
makes you smile in
that secret special way
makes you want to linger
in a lover's fantasy
makes your day
There is love that hurts and hates
and kills any chance of saving
face or heart
burns the bright flame of your being
into ash
leaves you bleeding, pleading
for any drug or thrill to kill the pain
There is love
indistinguishable from insanity
in any way your twisted mind
will go
There is love that lets you know
you have a soul
because it's growing 
magically
Which love are you offering 
to me?


I offer you a human love
not constrained to simple prophecies
Part need for another face
in which to see my reflection
Part need for nurturing solace
in uncertain days
Part need to be hero, adored
shining spirit in your eyes
Because you are the adored vision 
in mine
You send my boundaries
leaping,
You in my life inspires me
to make that leap, creating
a greater vision of me
encompassing we
Crawling into each other's 
place of repose,
breaking borders,
It doesn't matter where
I am
when I'm with you.

The change happens quickly
as in a feature film,
or excruciatingly prolonged,
a soap opera romance 
slowly dying
new characters may intercede
archetypal stories may
cross our stars
navigating our lives
in different directions
We grow complacent, calcified,
disinterested
Angry words burn us inside
smoldering
Heat no longer a welcome
participant of romance
Your little ways
My little ways
imps of annoyance
Is there Hope in this
box of pain?
Over and over
yet never over
in the bodies and souls
of humans
experiencing love.


love poem by moonlight

I told you my heart was wrapped in bloody
newspapers, ripe with the stench of 
long and brutal battles.
I tried to deny you entrance 
when you rang while I was
entranced in the respite,
the invisibility of sleep.
Yet I fell open as you touched me,
eyes melting into eyes,
lips melting into ecstasy.
Your fingertips feathering,
so soft and warm, along my
long parched skin.
I want so to believe again
in two hearts beating wholeness.


Dreams of Love

She is there, in my room, waiting.  Silent as I close the door, turn out the light, turn out the world.
I feel her presence behind, reaching to touch my clavicle, soothe vagal impulse to turn.  I feel her hand, supple, strong, heating through in contact, healing in that sacred touch fortified with love.
We kiss, we melt, we swirl like cotton candy, sweet, sticky, surreal.  We touch into solidity to feel, each exquisite synapse response a remembrance of permeability.  We taste.  There are no words.

I know I said (I prayed):

To be adored beyond embarrassment
To be she who can do no wrong, because beloved
To be gifted accurate reflective critique
as superlative reviews, with just a tweak suggested

To fall securely into open arms and heart
expecting only me
Each blessed day to start
gazing into shining eyes that see so deeply,
so wisely, my precious wondrous being
I have never had from lovers,
brothers, Mom or Dad
what I have taught myself severely
I can never have
Too bad.  So sad.  Can't let fantasy 
keep me from my daily dance with debt.
Dreaming freely receivng
love
never to be met.

We meet secretly, in places that can't be mapped or tethered.  She embraces me in bursts of rapid movement, seductively slowed from motion to subtle traces of desire.
I am emotively charged ecstasy, pulsing electrically beyond space/time.  She is imaginal fluid gently shaping eternity.  We are ouroboros, ancient fantasy, modern physics.
This is the charm I need to cast the spell, to open the fortress, to open my eyes adoring sensation.  I become energy as she feeds me the ambrosia of her essence.  I become beloved.


Goddess Dreams of Love
In a far off land, across a careening sea
Beauteous Damsel made a brave decree:
"I am the monarch, the dominant She
Who Must Be Obeyed."
Then she smiled a million miles
Sunshine bright for days.
A sad young thing on a lonely cloud-strewn beach
Looks longingly on a face he cannot reach.
If he had the words he knows he could beseech
her with noble speech. He prays
to the Goddess of Miracles:
"Please, show me the way."
On a cloudless, moonless night redolent of dreams
Towering waves inundate sand, glowing streams
Showering pure delight, igniting those gleams,
A golden thread together sowing their seams
Silent day arrives, crescendos to song
She glides the beach, feeling fit and strong
"Lithe leaping lyric carries me along."
Her eyes reach onto the beach
To the lapping waves
Where he, dreaming, plays.
Out here, deep in the sea, wild and blue
Do you dream of romance, poignant and true?
Afraid when you awake nothing is new
Swimming eternally free, nothing but you?
Singing your song along a lonely beach
Knowing not who or where it's beauty may reach
Strong is the monarch, sure in her speech,
In her reign
Goddess caressed, you are blessed
for all of your days.


For Leda and Her Lover

Slow, languid romance
Gliding, alive in the dance
Coyly exchanging glances,
lithe, feather touches
hand to hand, to waist, to loin.
Enjoying little licks, lovers' gifts,
luscious lips,
tender whispers, savory tasting, 
lingering kisses, tingling
skin, tangling hair, 
intently aware, intensely
THERE
amazed, amused, 
enrapt, enthused in grace,
in sharing,
playfully
joined


Diamonds and Rust

"Diamonds and Rust" like Joanie says
memories, I mean
lovers.
I saw you tonight with your San Francisco cut
and that old double-edged blade
went piercing through my heart
leaving me bleeding
memories
long through this autumn night
of no-sleep blues and golds
and rusty burnished reds
that cut like diamonds.

I call to you in fevered dreams  
that leave me gasping,
haunting all through the dreary day.
Can't escape that sudden urgency.
Just like days gone by.  You don't answer.
You don't hear me through all that mass
-- your own driving imperative.
We meet so seldom
separation so long.
We are like strangers.
Yet times we have touched, one to one,  
to perfection,
have been one strength and impulse
have known such intimacy . . .
I call to you now,
Hearing your voice in every song of romance.


Reflections

Walking long mornings into sunrise
You stood by and took the earth into your arms
like grainstalks
I called you my Degas print.
You spoke of the moon.
21 days and nights we tarried.
Almost single, almost married.
I loved you.
You spoke to me in words of magic.
Will you speak to me again?
Hollywood houses and Paris cafes bowed to us.
You said you needed work and companions.
I cursed you in my mind, and went off
seeking other follies.
The days look longer now, feel somehow strange.
Love is like a looking glass, reflecting change.


Neptune in Libra

I catch clouds and hold them for awhile in my mind
they keep me drifting.
I catch minds and let them float behind my eyes
They keep me sifting through thoughts and moods.
I catch you for awhile, drifting through my mind.
I catch your smile, your thoughtstreams, your
ups and downs.
I catch you for awhile and let you linger through
my moments.
I catch clouds and shape them to your form
they keep me drifting.
I dream forms and demons and fleeting glimpses
of your mind.
I dream while clouds drift away into formless
wispings.
I catch your eye in the corner of my mind
In drifting, shifting dreams that float away,
Yet stay -- yet linger,
Always thinking you.


Little Love Poems
I.
Passion Plays
Sidewalk street scenes
Commercialized love-ins at the five and dime.
It's getting so you can't speak of intimate feelings
Without sounding like a third rate flick
Or pocket novel.
So we go cold in protest
And that is the evil
Of obscenity.

II.
I fell in love once
Now they just take on different
Faces and Forms,
These objects of my passions.
It's all the same fucking merry-go-round
Of rapid pulse beats
And hot and cold flashes
And none of it seems very real or sane
Or even, at this well-worn point,
Romantic.

III.
You said you loved me,
And it made my world.
I called you my lover,
And felt secure in the race to conquest.
Yet lately, when I'm alone
I feel an urge to leaving;
And when I'm with you,
I'm not there at all.

IV.
Love is a word people use a lot.
I love you.
Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not five minutes,
But right now
You touch me
Through a look, a phrase, an expression,
The way you stand so firmly on your ground,
And I respond
With the hot flush of love
In a smile.

No comments:

Post a Comment