love poetry


Love poem i

Whatever makes you say I am your lover?
I suspect that it is
patently untrue....

for you say it
yet I cannot see
any great connection
between the thing you say
and what you do....

and you wonder constantly if I distrust you.



love poem ii

Don't touch me now with those soft eyes
and smooth musician's hands;
they say too many things
yet not enough.

Sometimes we charge each other
some great price
that neither one can meet
and, having taken it,
grow close,
even as close as we did;
and then I find
we are too close
for comfort.



Love poem iii

Nervous silence,
strange half looks,
pauses,
moving eyes -
tension falls between us like a hammer.

Jerky words and movements,
defensive sleight of hand,
fault and blame thrown like dice;
advantage
leads to disadvantage
in a restless game
whose wrestling rules
neither of us fully understand...

Days apart
we hold each other close,
words lying between us
unspoken -
perhaps they are irrelevant,
perhaps we are afraid,
or perhaps we need to hold each other....

frightening....



love poem iv

When I look at you
I see disfigurement in me -
a different image
offering me new vision.

When I look at you I feel
water rushing in
andsearching both my eyelids
for escape.

Looking deeper
there's no sadness -
these would-be tears don't sting -
rather like a candle at a railing in the dark
tell the horror of a fear
that all we feel could vanish,
that all I touch,
being polish,
will just rust.



love poem v

Offering you my love
why should I feel as at a wake
for something that occurred
so wretchedly an age ago
that I am rendered dumb?

A wake
at which some ancient voices
whisper words of pain,
of losing heads
and piercing hearts
of ego loss and rain?

Will you eat my body
or will I swallow yours?
or did we do that years ago
when some more ancient blood-glass
took the drops?

But I offer you my love
from a moon-soaked shell;
salty waves are playing
round the crab
and Cancer causes scuttles on the rocks.





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