Poems about Love

I’m surprised how many poems I have written that relate to relationships both in and out of love.

I could do a reading presenting them in a logical order to tell a story, but then I’d have the makings of a play, and that would probably be more entertaining. Then I remember Sam Shephard and Joseph Chaikin’s “Savage Love” (read it at http://www.csua.berkeley.edu/~dxu/poetry/savage.html) and so the play thing’s been done; and that’s why stuff ends on the shelf.

Meanwhile here’s the backbone of my proposed story,3 poems that were included in the collections "Sunfire" and "Turn Your Head"

1

When I am sleeping
you come
softly over these stones;
I turn deeper.
You slip words into my ears,
liquid syllables,
sickles sliding down.

Night-time turns drunk;
longing for more,
your tongue to enwrap me;
I turn deeper.
You trickle down dreams;
our limbs braided,
we slip into one.

2

It's a certifiable moment
a punch-drunk second
a pulse's high tide.

A dog eats grass
a water drop shivers
a barrel fills to its brim
an apple falls
a body drifts
a face buckles
a lover screams.

At the tip of an orgasm
passion powders;
the creek turns to dust.


3


He, who covered my body
with snail-trails,
whose hands were wrack
swept over my skin,
kisses on my back
a colony of shell fish.

He, who would have crossed a mountain range
for an hour between my thighs
now crawls over me
with wizened passion.
Gutted of love,
he comes clawing,
scavenging;
and insults me with lies
that have made greater pincers
of his mouth than his hands.

What does he see in me?

Meat to excite him,
his groper's desires,
even his fingertips betray him.
But no more,
the erotic becomes ugly,
decrepit manoeuvres disconnected
from their original meanings;
the touches stain you.

I have watched him slither from my gaze
a thousand times a night
while slipping the word love
from his vocabulary;
watched him develope this communication
of knives and forks.