A Quickie

Eyes met / sparkled & gleamed

swept
           us 

                into
                      next meet

(but you
             don’t
                      need—
                               those deets)

For today's prompt, we have our third two-for-Tuesday prompt, which means you get two prompts, and they are: Write a love poem. Write an anti-love poem.

* * *

The Husband That Never Was (A Poem for Day Seventeen of PAD)

Here is the prompt (for day seventeen) copied from Poetic Asides: For experienced April PAD Challengers, today’s prompt will seem familiar. In fact, I kind of tipped my hand yesterday with my example poem of what today’s Two-for-Tuesday prompt would be.

For today’s Two-for-Tuesday prompt:

1. Write a love poem.
2. Write an anti-love poem.

There's No Record of You and Me

The Husband That Never Was

We said “I do” a thousand times
under the scraggly
limbs of my neighbor’s
apple tree where I stepped
on a rusty nail the summer
we eloped before
we ever met.
You climbed the
blue fir tree up to the electrical
wires, then looked
down on me, smiled with only one side
of your mouth the way you do now
from across the way.
For our honeymoon, we ransacked
your mother’s bedroom, spread out
on the floor among some five hundred
LPs—
"Jive Talking”
our wedding march. 


*****

Opposites of Love - a Poem for Day Three of PAD

Well, darn. It's six minutes until tomorrow, so I'm posting a poem that isn't quite finished. 

Here is the prompt for today (day three):

I’ve found over the years that most people who can make it through three days have the stamina to keep poeming for 30. So let’s get through this together!

For today’s prompt, take the phrase “(blank) of Love,” replace the blank with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem. Possible titles could include: “Water Bottle of Love,” “Smart Phone of Love,” “Toothbrush of Love,” “Tweet of Love,” or any number of blanks of love. I actually kind of love this prompt and am surprised I’ve never done it before.

He Wanted to Sit While She Wanted to Stand

Opposites of Love

There was something exhilarating about
the bold contrast of his three six-foot over-
coats so perfectly arranged, to my thirty-six under-
garments in great disarray.

I craved the ideal mate to love
me until death became fate, but her devotion
smothered me like a lumpy pillow
held against my snoring face. 

***

Bitter Fruits (a Golden Shovel)

Another try at a Golden Shovel. I was able to relax with these words a bit more. (See below.)

Marbles Were a Fun Game, Once

Bitter Fruits
after “Mountain” by Clifton Gachagua

            (line used: grief saddled in my back like a bag of marbles)

In the garden where I once pressed tomato seeds into dirt, grief
flourishes, sprouting up with open arms, saddled
onto this stiff body carrying me from bed to bed. In
barren lands, I hunt for my former self—before tears bullied my
desires, saturated my confidence, forced me back
to sodden sighs that confiscate my days. Like
a rabid fruit bat, fooling me into believing a
lie, you flitted from one innocent bug to the next, displaying your bag
of trophies dangling like a fig tree, pulsing of
seduction. Me, a game you play like that old forgotten game of marbles.

* * * * *

Not That Man's Best Friend (a Golden Shovel Poem)

Tonight I am playing with a form I haven't written before—a golden shovel. Read more about it on Poetic Asides. Or just go straight to my poem below. 

That Man's Best Friend

Not That Man’s Best Friend

        after Billy Collins

Why couldn’t you have stayed, like a good boy? Nobody
came fetching for me yesterday (or any day before that). Here,
by the door I wait, desperate to touch upon the likes
of love, the likes of liking, feel a stroke down my back. But a
few years have passed now and my love has turned wet
like the fishy-breathed tongue of a neglected dog.

(Line used: “Nobody here likes a wet dog” from “To a Stranger Born in Some Distant Country Hundreds of Years From Now” by Billy Collins.)

* * * * *

How to Get to Know Her

I have no other words.

Let Love Fly

How to Get to Know Her

Survey tissue supplies. Offer
your sleeve for runny
(& breathing) expletives seeking asylum
in her deserted heart. Observe
runway and landing
for each aching tear. Soothe
facial scars 
with open-lipped kisses.
Tuck her in 
safe, with a grip
like you mean it. 
Don’t let her go
to her grave
without 
hearing
your secrets.


*****

(Un)Happy Hour - Poetry to Start the Week

Taking the plunge into a Monday-morning poem.

Go Ahead and Jump

(Un)Happy Hour

Somewhere underneath the shade
of rose-spotted Nepenthes pitchers,
parched lips puckered and retracted
like a clownfish out of water—me
without you. Standing at rounded edge,
your eyes fell headfirst down
into the pools of promising
refreshment I could not measure up to.
One slip and it was too late for us;
that mistake sent you tumbling to hazy
forgetfulness where the only thing
that mattered was that you
were no longer thirsty.

*****