Poem - Discontent in Love

Invest in me, my heart would say,
The beauty of your youth,
Before our days are spoiled with age,
With time’s approaching truth.

For when I look into the glass
It grows less like the form,
That’s borne my name through harsher days,
Of conquest, sin, and storm. 

I see my lights are fading there
That guide to my embrace;
How dimly do they shine beneath
The lines upon my face. 

I surely know, who’ve kept myself
So long as company,
How painful is the winding path
That finds its way to me. 

Against this, how your smile cheers
Each part, and there renews;
I have no strength to tame desire,
Or comfort to refuse. 

But you deserve a happy end,
Whom darkness cannot know,
And not to waste unhappily
On one corrupted so. 

I cannot bring myself to doubt
The truth your smiles convince,
That you deserve a fairy tale,
But I am no one’s prince.

A Poem by Couplets

O wand'ring eyes, on what lips do you dwell,
Whose pouting smile bring thoughts no man can tell?
When I from her have neither sound nor word,
Then all the hues and shapes of life are blurred.
Beneath the grove I sit in contemplation
Of one who is my joy and desolation.
I'd hold her near, when my thoughts are unwinding,
Then tie them up, and make her touch a binding,
For distance is to love no harm nor cure,
Except to swell the bruises we endure.
I'd take her hand, if love is an illusion,
To prove or pacify my soul's confusion.
And underneath her arm, against her breast,
I long to stay, where safely I may rest.
Into ecstatic dreams she'd nurture me
Where I refresh myself with reverie;
We'd only rise when morn is far advanced,
Being so much in one embrace entranced.
Then come to me, O thought most prone to stray,
And be for me the evening and the day.



O wand'ring eyes, on what lips do you dwell,
Whose pouting smile bring thoughts no man can tell?
When I from him have neither sound nor word,
Then all the hues and shapes of life are blurred.
Beneath the grove I sit in contemplation
Of one who is my joy and desolation.
I'd hold him near, when my thoughts are unwinding,
Then tie them up, and make his touch a binding,
For distance is to love no harm nor cure,
Except to swell the bruises we endure.
I'd take his hand, if love is an illusion,
To prove or pacify my soul's confusion.
And underneath his arm, against his breast,
I long to stay, where I may safely rest.
Into ecstatic dreams he'd nurture me
Where I refresh myself with reverie,
We'd only rise when morn is far advanced,
Being so much in one embrace entranced.
Then come to me, O thought most prone to stray,
And be for me the evening and the day.

Ode to My Blanket

The cold wind creeps beneath the sill
And through the curtain breaks,
The morning light now mocks the chill
That o'er my moustache rakes.

Then you pick up from some odd dream
Of pleasant company,
And twirling round my limbs would seem
To be that fantasy.

The warmth of ninety-eight degrees
Of passion on my breast,
Could I be ever more at ease
With such a one to rest?

So finally, I hoarsely call
My waking vision's name,
But you, the living's warmer pall,
Won't answer for the same.

The Waltz (A Sonnet)

Your hair gives a perfume somewhere between
Nectar and autumn spice, and floats in locks
That curl between my hands; and when you lean
On me, the music's steady rhythm mocks
My heart. We step smoothly on cue, but it
Is racing past the orchestra, and I
Wonder how two people can so well fit
Together-hand in hand and thigh to thigh--
But keep it to a waltz. Though this is passion:
To see fulfillment coming, and hold back,
Moving so much as music gives the ration
Of pleasure, till abundance fills the lack.

Yet I can hold you only for so long
As I am held in rapture by the song.

New Pygmalion

I turn you on a mental wheel,
Where memory and fantasy
Are blended into moving form,
And with my sculpting hands, there feel
Your beauty hidden quietly
Beneath the living flesh, too warm
To call my own. And my desire
For you, some other you, despairs
That I both loathe and love it when
You writhe and squirm with restless fire:
For, Galatea, all my cares
Are vain to make you stone again.

Tower of Babel (A Sonnet)

If I could build a tower of what raises
My spirit at your voice and glue its joints
With memories of you, then all your praises
Would reach the panoply of starry points
And graze the flowing zodiac, and there
Amidst the clouds, where I inhabit, hearing
Your light footfalls approach, my eyes would stare
Down on those left below me, only fearing
To be with them. So you, so I. What we
Experience is far more solid rock,
Standing for ages, while what fleetingly
Some call love falls into rubble and block.

Then let us build a ziggurat of passion
Greater than ancient Babel hands could fashion.

Volcano (A Sonnet)

O silent raging stream of flame which courses
Its way into my heart and fingertips,
Burning to ash all my nerves as it forces
Its way into the light; and where it rips
My parched and cracking flesh, it steals away
Sensation, for I seem to grasp at air;
And next to truly holding you, can they,
Whether the earth, or breeze, or stream compare?
Beside you, they are not; so this desire
Extinguishes their substance into smoke,
A rumor which once warmed, but not a fire.
Existence signifies but to evoke.
 --I only feel through you, if that is feeling,
 --So pity me, in adoration kneeling.

A Love Poem (A Lantern to Outshine the Moon)

If I had half a dozen smiles like yours,
Trapped in a vase as lucid as your skin,
I'd make a lantern to outshine the moon,
And temples for your light to gather in.

Or if your gaze were trapped in iron doors,
Like tongues of flame against the winter's chill,
Then it would melt the hardest ice as soon
As it would thaw the hardness of my will.

But you have freedom through those lips of rose,
When pressed against my own which give release,
So do not let the stars be thus outshone,
But let my light in yours the more increase,

And with the fire that through my fingers flows,
Though I, in shadow, veil your deity,
Unbind my limbs who, frozen and alone,
Would bend my knees and worship ceaselessly.

Addiction (A Poem)

If I could flee the foot-worn path
Into contemplative retreat,
And shield my heart from Cupid's wrath,
My seeming joys would seem complete;

But all I have to flee the pain
Of love for you, yet unrequited,
Is to be numbed by self-disdain
Through revelry, yet not delighted.

For your embrace is more like wine
Than wine itself, and feeling it
Rush through my veins is form divine
Unmatched by any counterfeit.

Then slay each straying thought, and look
Once more at me, and cast a net
Into my heart, where I mistook
So many things before I set

My thoughts on you. And here I'm bound
To reel on dreams of opium,
Until, with you, at last I've found
Endless store of delirium.

To a Friend (A Sonnet)

Were love so rough to me or as unkind
As you are to yourself, or felt disdain
Like you for sycophants, I'd never pined
For you in company, nor felt the pain
Of her attention, but though cruel scars
Mark Cupid's chiding lash, and terrible
Is nature's law, which all indifference bars,
In you she is still kind and merciful.
For by the work of life's vicissitude,
With you, my Bacchus, love has sternly taught
Me to beware of lenient solitude,
Which lasting joy, as friends, has never brought;

But were you free of love's encumbering bands,
Still wound in yours would be my longing hands.

Ambrosial Flower (A Sonnet)

O sweet ambrosial flower, whom the dew
Of morning crowns with Vesta's diadem,
How brightly does your fire shine when few
Have seen its dancing flames! How bright to them
Who shut out noisy day from claustral silence!
My rose of chastity, how dear you've kept
Your garden's purest earth, and wrecked with violence
The creep of tares, and never fondly slept
The night with fantasies of vain indulgence!
Now, if it will not hinder your ascent
To angels' ecstasy, nor shade effulgence
Of such a lofty star, I ask consent

Merely to warm my hands, bitten with sin,
At your enduring hearth, hidden within.

Planting Time: An Ozarks Spring (A Sonnet)

'Tis Spring, and dogwood days are finally here
When sunlight drips into the shady hollow,
And sweat runs underneath the farmer's collar;
Then, while young rascals fret with mortal fear
That rain will make the sunlight disappear
They try to flee their elders' looks askance
The which they know could snare them with a glance
To digging in the beds. A strange idea!

But though the days of Spring are heavy-laden
With unrewarding, long-abiding toil,
Still children in the streams are gaily wading
And skinny-dipping in the muddy pool.
And who would want, until the lights are fading,
To go a-digging taters in the soil?

Strange Vows (A Sonnet)

To look at you, it seems a cruel waste
That you have almost vowed to live apart
And from my pleas withdrawn a cloistered heart.
And this, not for the sake of staying chaste,
For we both know that you have never placed
Your piety in vessels quite so pure.
Instead, because, you say, love is unsure,
Unwieldy for ambition, full of haste
Impractical for one who seeks to climb
The farther summits of her own success.
How strange is this far lofty hermitage
Where contemplating mammon fills your time
And evanescent things, built to excess
Erect a convent shrine of sacrilege.

Springtime (A Sonnet)

Spring days and summer hearts are all in bloom
As we half-rush to quit our cluttered burrow
Like claustrophobes leaving a narrow room;
Outdoors, we open up the hopeful furrow
To make space for the soon-nutritious seed,
Forcing its way to sunlight through black earth.
It seems that freedom is a vital need
For living things to grow from obscure birth. 
And so, our beds, too seldom plowed with leisure,
Are overgrown, and practicalities
Keep love from ripening to lasting pleasure--
For harvests only grow when we're at ease.
 And in our hearts, which have so long lain fallow,
 We've left the seed of love a place too shallow.

Split Personality (A Sonnet)

Sometimes, for lack of seeing you, I dream
That you do not really exist at all,
And when we text all day, I only seem
To share with you my lofty thoughts and small.
Perhaps to you, the other side of me,
I am just solipsistically confessing--
A fairer double personality
Than I have heard of anyone possessing.
And these strange thoughts prompt me to realize
How such close friendships are so rarely found
That they one's life can better summarize
Than eulogies once he is in the ground.
So this Narcissus never runs away
From Echo's voice, always my strength and stay.

Love's Art (A Sonnet)

If just one touch from you can kindle fire
Within my cooling heart, imagine then
How much a thousand more might stoke desire,
Lit by the phosphorus of skin on skin.
And if your laugh seems like a melody
Blown  by the wind into my waiting ear
Then what a song our sighs of love might be
When joined in chorus for the stars to hear;
And if to represent your silhouette,
A single artist could not meet the task,
Then think how many artists would regret
The charge to paint your figure without mask.
-Such beauty, then, we hold back from the world,
-Till intertwined our passion is unfurled.

Dangerous Memories (A Sonnet)

The memories of you still linger on,
A morning after bliss, but sans the joy
Of seeing you. I only wish the dawn
Rose on us both, and I were still the boy
That you could not resist. But I am not
The man-barely a man--who cautiously
With kisses and frightened caresses bought
Some rest from conscience. I ungratefully
Walked out on us, on happiness and love,
 As though someday I could come back to you--
The goddess of my guilt--whom years remove
From hope, and all my later lovers rue.
  But if, though all the world should hinder me,
  You asked, I'd be yours unreservedly.

Fragment from High School (A Sonnet)

The first four lines of this sonnet were written in high school. Unfortunately, I threw away my book of sonnets from back then, and I can't, for the life of me, remember the rest of the poem. So, I attempted to reconstruct the poem's theme and finish what I knew. Here it is:

My lady's bosom rose is midnight black,
Its petals brush her cheek as though a pall
For her were gathered from a dying track
Of roses when the leaves whither and fall;
And I beside her bier pretend to mourn
So without company to keep the rite
Of worshipping my goddess, so much torn
Between being bereaved or acolyte;
And next to this unconsecrated fane,
On whose altar her fairest limbs are laid--
No more pale in death than life--in vain
Are libations of tears for prayers unpaid.
   For only now Persephone's embrace
   Has cast aside my fear to ask her grace.

Can't We Call This Love? (A Sonnet)

My thoughts wander from this to that, from hope
To loneliness without respite, and still
I can't untangle love's unruly rope
And master it to my uncertain will.
So now I start to think, if day and night
My aching flesh and wayward reason find
Their way repeatedly to you, despite
That their inconstancy has made them blind,
Then can't we call this love, and make of it
What joy we have in this brief interval,
When we are not yet angels, celibate
Though caught in raptures far more rational?
  For days without your voice seem like a waste
  Of sunlight, like ripe cherries without taste.

If I Were First (A Sonnet)

If I were first with you, then you'd turn red,
As blood fouled up your youthful countenance,
And mid the roses of our wedding bed,
Might weep lost days of pious innocence.

It isn't wrong to pick a blossomed rose,
Or to enjoy a summer-ripened fruit,
But sad to trim the bud that springtime blows
Or cut the upstart sapling at its root.

Then you who have endured the spring and thrived,
And given seed entrapped in berries sweet,
Whose pleasant taste the winter has survived,
Know well the flavor that my tongue will greet.

Oh let me fall as drops of golden rain,
Upon your garden hid by lonely pain.