My Six Favorite Love Poems For Valentine's Day

For almost thirty years now I have written poetry. Poems about everything from robots to chicken wings. But not many love poems. No particular reason comes to mind immediately. Just not something I have done much of. However, looking through my 25 years of published work I think I may be able to find just enough poems to make a  list for Valentine's Day. In chronological order.


Love Poem


My fingers carefully avoid
Strychnine and Plath's poems,
Instead contemplating a year
In Provence picking grapes
On the chance this story
Will amuse you on my return,
And my lips say nothing
Though they know seven
Mayan words that would make
Your face contort then melt
Under me. It's because
they are in love with
The garlic and zucchini
We could chop in our
Kitchen someday.




The Dreamers


Somenight while we loll under
Fat stars and blue sheets
And each other,
Our world will be remodeled
With props from Universal's
Back lot,
And though I'll sip bourbon
Neat with Bogie in Casablanca
And you'll stroll out of the MOMA
Mumbling about Kandinsky
As Kong pulverizes a
Commuter train,
At dawn in Paris in my hand
I'll feel a hand. Yours.






Dream Endings


Me in you, curious to say it, on a couch,
Somewhere, the world outside
The dream window furious,
But unable to end it.


Me, riding a blue tiger in Africa,
Under you w/o coercion
Or languid transformations,
Simply under you for the pleasure of it.


Water boiling in the kitchen of our dream
Could be coffee, tea, or boiling water
For the howling masses
Outside our dream window
Unable to end it.


From the dream window,
In luxurious triumph over the crowd,
We drink the boiling water
And vow never to end it.






Roller Girl


You’re all elbow
And hip
And heart


A blur and a
Bruise
And a booty
Block into
Love’s suicide
Seats.






The Ways In Which I Approach My Love


Drunken with May's honey I fly wobbily through
your open window like a bee


Cautiously like a cat I sneak up on you to be stroked


Sensing the rain I am out of the deluge and into you like
an unexpected shelter in the thick


Sideways I come gathering your lack of surprise in the white of an eye


Bidden or unbidden I am welcomed like sunburst


On fours or sixes depending what dangles


Taking the middle path though your lips leave me in no mood
for moderation


From all the places I have been, am, will be, here, now, you, me

You have my permission to use any of these poems for Valentine's Day.

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