[RCL]

I see that several of the current Met posts are about loving dogs, cats, and a cantering horse, a handful Darwin liked, plus insight into cattle’s prescient and punny epiphany about their barbecuing. And there are always a few about those of our own species: beloved men and women. Add your Valentines, pro-and-or-con, if you like (the exercise has several predecessors).

Our Lie Ins

I love our lies about

Who loves the other more
Who best instructs our child
Who sticks to what we swore
Who was the first beguiled

Whose jokes are corniest
Who listens to the other
Which of us chose best
Why we’ll stay together

When we lie together

[Gail White]

From the anthology Love Affairs at the Villa Nelle:

The Overview

My greatest love, a Persian cat,
arrived when I was twenty-two.
I wouldn't have expected that

I'd fall in love in seconds flat
with eyes of enigmatic blue.
My greatest love, a Persian cat,

refuted the old caveat:
Cat-love is not, like dog-love, true.
I wouldn't have expected that

she'd choose my lap for habitat,
but year by year her kindness grew.
My greatest love, a Persian cat,

outlasted many a fine male rat
including, my false darling, you.
(I wouldn't have expected that).

And so I find, while working at
My Life and Loves: An Overview,
my greatest love: a Persian cat.
I wouldn't have expected that.

[RCL]

Gail,

And who would have expected such a delightful love-charged Villanelle!

[RCL]

A Sirius Valentine

She’s Nature’s art in full disgrace
beginning with her longing face.
Below her bangs the eyebrows mate,
her eyes are runny, teeth like slate.
Her ears, unlike smooth tiny seashells,
swing a lot like misshaped cowbells.
Her twitching nose is ski-slope long
and never has inspired a song.
With lips severely under-drawn
and tongue that yaps from dusk to dawn,
with sour breath to make one reel,
this is one gal no one would steal.
But I’m a pooch who loves her smile
when we’re romancing doggy style.

From Dogs R Us

[RCL]

Love Struck

Cupid’s strikes are random treasure,
lasting gifts of painful pleasure.


From Asses of Parnassus

[RCL]

Couples

One complains
One explains

[RCL]

In Her Hip Pocket

In her hip pocket, like a pupal worm,
I’m making every effort to sustain
my love for her—she thinks I should remain
back here, a dormant mute, to reaffirm
devotion. In this cocoon, I feel alarm
about my fate but try not to complain.
Bruised at times by buttocks, and in pain,
I still can’t voice my dream—to finally charm
my way from heavy hips up to her face,
where I, unfolding like a chrysalis,
my mandibles aquiver for a kiss,
might light on rosy lips and taste her grace.
I fear this larval state will never pass:
she holds me hostage here to kiss her ass.

From Sonnet Stanzas

[Michael Cantor]

For Trudy, in New York on Business

You came and went in dead flat Hopper light:
encounter at the Whitney; swift affair
that we, both married, knew would lead nowhere –
but all each wanted was the one-night
stand of sorts; late afternoon-lit flight
to your hotel; a lamp, a desk, a chair,
a bed on which to stumble, fall and share
the satisfaction of an appetite

for unexpected sex. No mysteries,
no chiaroscuro worked to mask the sight
of loose and mottled flesh. And did we care?
Was there more there than Edward Hopper sees?
You filled the window, stark, unshaded, bright;
I watched your shadow paint the soot-choked air.


Looking Back

The way the marriage worked was she would paint
from midnight until six am, and he
would rise as she slid into bed, and she
would sleep past noon, and wake, and reacquaint
herself with friends, and smile without complaint
when he did not come home some nights; and he
was no more bothered by their life than she,
for neither cared that either was no saint.

Or so the story went – the one he told
to women he encountered now and then,
and polished with each use, then used again -
devised to snare the curious or bold.
It worked so well that finally he forgot
which parts of it were true and which were not.


These two are from Life in the Second Circle.

[RCL]

I really like these, Michael, how they focus light on truths of the imperfect human heart.

[RCL]

To this world's lovers:

Seasonal Cycles

Lovers

Spring is spanking new
Summer the hot flirt
Autumn strips for you
Winter’s cool dessert

Trysts

Spring beneath the lilacs
Summer in the clover
Autumn on the haystacks
Winter in the parlor

Relationships

Springtime teases
Summer pleases.
Fall matures
Winter endures.

Songs

Spring eulogies
Summer lyrics
Fall elegies
Winter epics


First at Autumn Sky Poetry Daily