Love Poems

A LITTLE BOOK OF LOVE POEMS

Locked in the hot sweat of a rocking arm, love, you lay,
Rocked in the hard, hot play of a scented tuft,
Straining hard in the ruff of your curling hair,
Pulling your loose curls from your ruffled mane,
Love, we were one and the dirty sheet enclosed us there,
Hot on a hard, hair bed in the covenant of spring,
That smelled of April and spoke to us of May.
There in the smell of perfumed sweat we lay
Till we were rocked by sleep away, and came
Later to life, surprised to be so cool
Lying in April with summer so far away?
Eyeing the last cool flicker of the day.

Blue eyes in a long frown and the red
Slash of a mouth, cheeks hard, high,
The sly arrogance of a fine line and a fine
Tight waist, you speak to me, leaning
Forward in excitement, a bit unedged perhaps,
A bit aware of the unedged leaning, you
Know what you say in unaware spurts of your
Black intensity and what you do.
Love done, you lean back on the pillow, now
Side seeing the blue light on the squared ceiling,
Unaware the meaning of the sight, seeing
Sideways the block of a chilled room in dead
Winter. Hot in the white sheet, cooling
Hands on the sheet edge, the rumpled
Waist resting in a momentary
Pause from hot desire.
You love......not me, but the hot impulse
0f a rush thrust in the white light shining,
And I know, I know what the strong desire
Says to the lean waist, but I know reclining
On a cooler pillow of long years of such gaming,
Hot as you now, but the aim of the long years
Tells me to watch closely with a kind smile smiling.

III

The dark moon rushes from a cloud, breathes
Black fire over the shadows of the trees,
Which falling in rippled shadows on the
Black earth, stand reeling there
With their agonizing arms paralyzed in air,
While in the warm grass sunk in spikes of uncut hay
I sleep as you reach a warm mouth on my waking eyes.

Everything lies between the circle and the square.
You touch my hand, I pull it straight away.
You coil your hair gently around my shoulder.
How far and straight the train tracks lie,
While the wheels roll on from there to here
And off in a scurry. The flowers swing around
Dangling on the straight stalk in the ground.
Living, we find life becoming circular but there
Is always that unforgiving square.

When the moon swims slow in the velvet sky
My love lies near beside, and I slyly eye
Her milkwhite thigh on my hip, while the white
And staring moon glides on the velvet sky away.

The pine cones tingle in the fond embrace
Of evening's chill. as maple blows a kiss to birch,
And mist of evening beds them softly down.
I drive away from all this harmony of trees,
Back to my bed in town, to try to sleep alone.

VII

Love is for
Nancy you are very
We have a real
You were in my room lying there
Your eyes seemed to me
We could be, but you feel so little
More
Why all the glances if
Your own captivity
Seeing your kinkling hair down your midback, I
You can be horrid very much oh.
Try to hear this half bit piece of halves
Halves always and a chunk lost
Come swinging long steps to the garden, love
And hear the evening in.
Lie with me close and make one whole day real
And if you like all whole make more with me
And chains of kisses panting in the night
The delicate smile of your eyes touching me
If you like this
But if, Nan, you do not, go.
If you can never, stop,
but if
I.......you.

VIII

Thinking how well she looks in dungarees
I can hardly see her in a cocktail lounge
Serving a drunk boor drinks and for a tip
Picking up eyes and thoughts of abuse....But I,
You please me, girl, greatly, and for gratuity
All of my heart and priceless fantasies.

A covenant between us from this moment
Love, to keep separate all our secret things
Together, and what we share,
Share miserly. This secret eye, made public here
For two and known to all, sees secretly.
Secrets are shared or secrets not at all.
I shall be publicly private as the cell
Of any monk who sat and starved and stared
In private at the universe, or stood
Tall on a tower to look upon the land.

Love, you are lovely far and near,
Sitting in clean isolation I hear
Rustle of your presence in another place.
I have now lost the figure of your face
But not your footstep's footfall in my ear
Or the breathing around your sheetfolded face.
A strong man about to run a long race
I stand a wait a moment in my place
To hear the signal and to also hear
Something from someone else, far and near,
Grace, and a watcher who watches as I race,
Not to speed me on but to see my face.
She races too a different, finer race,
Like mine in part, subtler perhaps. Near
Me, my love, more than your woman's face,
I want your subtler, gauzier pace.
Freely my heart and hands run far and near
At last rid of the archetypal fear,
` I give you strength, my love, and give me grace.

My new love rarely speaks, talks spare,
Lean. Her dark eyes
Flash indecision, questioning she feels
Newly. Love in her black eyes
Flashes. Small span of time and
Small the times of feeling full and fair
Flush of black love feeling. Now
See her bright litheness of waist and turning neck
Until she whirls and in her black eyes bright
Breaks the edge with all her body's smile.

XII

Tell me, O Darling, where the magic grows.
Our age of bombs, hate, warfare and the air
Heavy with poison. The world is like the men
Who foul it, obsolete before our time.
These things have cloyed our patrimony and despair
Stands by the jail we live in. From your heart
Show me where still the magic fountains flow.

XIII

Lying awake all night I saw pure gold,
Not yours perhaps nor hers, but all the same
Gold in a glitter of thoughts shining on black
Velvet. Where was the alchemy which once made gold of lead?
Where came this vision of light and glittering?
It came from nothing more than you to me.

XIV

(How strange the poison of a suspicious soul
Eyeing itself in fear. Join two, make three,
With plots and lots of chattelled mortgages
Heaped on you. Be free, recede.) I lie quietly,
Multiply the scores of secret pleasurings,
Hundreds of kisses and loving glancing eyes
Piling the numbers of wealth in love. But hide
The tally lest the hexing crowd inspect the list
And curse our gaming with an evil, evil eye.

When we are gone, and no one thinks of how
I have loved and you have tried to live
Honestly or a little less, or a little piece
More, there will be mercy shown to new shrived souls
That struggled in their incubation clothes
And tried to breathe a little air to live
Or love a little. But you will be forgot
Because you tried to live a little more
And missed the loving a little more or less.

XVI

And if I love you, Love, and love you not
More than I should, and can, and bear, yet not
More than I should, and more than you would, but not
More than you love me, and more than other do
Who love long years of nights, losing the gleam
Of pierced emotions and exacerbated souls,
I'd love you still more than any sad soul knows
The prize or cure for, more than my sanity
Tells me is good and right, and not
Merely enough, or just sufficiently,
But love as I breathe in love and breathe the air
Free in the morning and long at evening time,
Not as they do or when the world requires,
No, but to ease my spirit running free,
Which is life's blood and work and life to me.

XVII

I will not help you magic moment make, longer
And speak in tones of soft modulated poetry.
Clash and the clawing of blind mad nails
Tearing the heart of stone from pith of flesh.
There is no magic growing in the forest green
Where you will find translations of the blood.

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William Harris
Prof. Em. Middlebury College
www.middlebury.edu/~harris