Category: Romance

Amateur Amore

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Cyborg Girl by Brian McRae

Amateur Amore

Adults, parents, they all say the same –
That my love is just puppies, is all.
This is my first crush, my first move in the game,
And to fall in love just means I’m gonna fall.
Sixteen, they say, that’s nothing,
This is just a beta test –
This girl, this guy, is yesterday tomorrow.
They say, don’t talk of loving
When I’m lonely and obsessed –
It’s only right I have to suffer sorrow.
Neophyte, dilettante, call me what you will,
But just don’t tell me I’m practicing a skill !

Adults, parents, they’re quick to exclaim
That my love is a see-saw, you know ?
They won’t meet my steady, won’t even learn their name,
When they soon need to forget old so-and-so.
Sixteen, they say, is nothing,
This is just experience –
A chance for some rite-of-passage fun.
Well, I may be new to loving,
But it’s still my present tense –
And I have to think that this one is the one.
Fledgling, tenderfoot, call me ingenue,
But I’ll break my heart myself, no thanks to you !

Birdlime Disease

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n654_w1150 by BioDivLibrary is licensed under CC-PDM 1.0

Birdlime Disease

The tinsel has been strung all week,
The holly wreathed around the door,
The cards bedeck the mantlepiece,
The tree is lit-up like a store.
But if we came inside to peek
On where to kiss – no go, it seems…
The mistletoe has yet to lease
It’s tenure on the ceiling beams.

The trouble is, our hostess speaks,
It dries out quickly in the warm –
And pleasures in the kiss decrease,
She finds, when beauties don’t conform.
For who can peck on rosy cheeks
Beneath such yellow-wilted leaves ?
And so, the gooser of the geese
Won’t dangle down till Christmas Eve.

“It isn’t really quaint and meek,
You know, but a toxic parasite.”
So says my clued-up, teenage niece –
“Infact, just like this kissing blight:
Demanding favours, beak-to-beak,
And women feeling bound to please.
From Pagan Briton, Ancient Greece –
Let’s leave tradition on the trees.”

But we don’t need to be so bleak,
My love, with New Year looming big !
Let’s open up our Winter fleece
And warm our lips beneath the sprig.
But if we came inside to seek
A spot to kiss, we’re out of luck –
The mistletoe, by cruel caprice,
Has not a berry left to pluck…

Pigeon Season

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Photo by Giannino Nalin on Pexels.com

Pigeon Season

The crossbills start their laying
While the New Year snows remain,
And the pigeons too are playing
At the family game again.

Then come the February frost,
And come the raven chicks,
While pigeons think it worth the cost
To gather-in the sticks.

Buzzards wait the Winter out,
And wait till March has shone,
And pigeons likewise have no doubt
On when to get it on.

The starlings flock at Eastertide
With Spring in paradise,
While pigeons think an April bride
Is ev’ry bit as nice.

The cuckoos drop their eggs in May
In other people’s nests,
Yet pigeons have no fear to lay
From unexpected guests.

The seagulls spend the Solstice broody
While the days are long,
And pigeons keep their Summers moody,
Purring out their song.

The mallards stretch their mating-season
Through the long July,
While pigeons also see no reason
Not to bat the eye.

There’s yellowhammers breeding yet
Through August, still not done,
While pigeons love to raise a sweat
Beneath the Summer sun.

September – all the birds have fledged,
And some have flown away,
Yet pigeons lay on, it’s alleged,
Through Autumn, come what may !

October, keeping on the job,
There’s always some around,
Still popping out the latest squab
To peck the frozen ground.

The pigeons even hatch them
Through the long and gloomy nights,
When only chickens match them
(Under artificial lights).

Till last, the Christmas fable,
Which has surely missed a trick,
With cooing in the stable
At the birth of this month’s chick.

Floriography

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Choosing by George Watts

Floriography

I wanted to speak the language of flowers,
Just like my heroines of old.
But how can the secrets of petals be ours
When meeting in Winter’s cold ?
I suppose there’s holly and mistletoe,
And snowdrops yet to come, perhaps ?
But love, I fear, has yet to grow,
And plenty of time to lapse…

I wanted to win you with floral wooing,
Now that Spring has raised his head –
But tulips are for financial ruin,
And lilies are for the dead.
I suppose there’s always the dandelion,
Though who sees the beauty beneath the weed ?
Our love, I fear, is swiftly dying,
Like daffodils gone to seed.

I wanted to cast such blossoming spells,
With Summer so rampant and velveteen –
But buttonhole-sunflowers smother lapels,
And roses come purple and green.
I suppose there’s too much to choose –
Exotic, or native ?  We cannot be both.
So love, I fear, is swamped for a muse,
And trapped in the undergrowth.

I wanted to breathe the tongue of the blooms,
But who remembers the code these days ?
And now that Autumn is blowing our rooms,
It feels too late for bouquets.
Yet I suppose dahlias could be for darlings ?
And conkers for fun, and pumpkins for screams ?
For love, I feel, will still find it charming,
Whatever it thinks it all means.

Leaving Inktober behind, there is just time for a seasonal bouquet before things get spook-ay...

Russian Rush

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Peasant Girl in Kokoshnik by anonski

Russian Rush

Is it just my ears,
Or are all these Slavic women baritones ?
Does the need to wrap their tongues
Round angular Cyrillics
Thus feed-back somehow into their very bones ?
Is it from the years
Of calling for Ivanovic, not Jones,
That ups capacity in lungs
Into those sexy and idyllic moans
They use to answer telephones ?
They always speak their English with a purr,
In a lower register.

Perhaps it’s their careers
As nurses or baristas, or tennis pros,
Or spies in paperbacks,
That slows their speech and drops it down a semitone or two ?
Or maybe it’s my ears,
And not some deep and cunning pose
To sigh like honeytraps ?
Of course, it’s just my vodka fantasy,
And even if it’s true –
The way they talk, their chosen key,
Is not in any way for me –
But nonetheless, I love the way they sound the way they do.

I had originally called this poem as Deep Throat.  It almost worked, but ultimately the leaker in All The President’s Men was very male and very American.

What do you mean, there’s another film which uses that title…

Those Two Impostors

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Out of the Square by Cesar Santos

Those Two Impostors

So there I was, a Son of Martha,
Making my way in the world.
I knew that I could keep my head
’Gainst any Brown Bess girl.

But that was ere I met my match
With Triumph and Disaster –
A pair of Ladies of Many Dreams
As clever as Aggie de Castrer.

They played my heart for pitch & toss,
With a swish of skirt in the dew –
With broken dinner knives, they dug,
To plant their roses blue.

Why did I go with the grey widow-maker
Upon my young-man’s feet ?
Oh, how I wish I’d walked by myself,
Where never the twain shall meet.

But I shall hang from the highest hill
On the road to Mandalay.
How far is St Helena now
From a lonely shilling-a-day ?

But no – don’t deal in lies –
For if a dog has torn my heart,
As it’s moving up and down again,
It’s just because I gladly played my part.

Don’t let cold iron be my master
While the gentlemen go by –
For the female of the species
Is a better man than I.

Nothing below the Wrist, Nothing above the Clavicle

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The Grand Odalisque by Jean Ingres, remixed by Nicolas Amiard

Nothing below the Wrist, Nothing above the Clavicle

She had about her four tattoos, as I recall,
Each one of which set within a sea of un-inked skin –
So ringed around her bicep was a Celtic braid,
And a seeing-eye was watching from her shoulder blade,
While her backbone bore a butterfly, tucked in the small,
And finally, a blood-red Moon where her ankle met her shin.
She always seemed so prim, and with her bashful eyes,
That her even having any came as some surprise.

Then one day, after we’d moved-in together,
I noticed something odd upon her breast, above her heart –
A kitten’s paw-print, still a little red with new.
She shyly fingered it and murmured “this one’s you”.
Unlike her bodywork, we didn’t last forever,
But I saw her yesterday as if we’d never been apart –
So easily we talked, it was quite a trip,
Till I saw a rose was peeking-out upon her hip.

Plagiarised Love

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Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko on Pexels.com

Plagiarised Love

All my honeyed words, I stole,
From radio and Hollywood –
They showed me how to play my role,
And made me think I really could.
I practised in the bedroom mirror,
Studied glossy magazines –
And ev’ry night was one night nearer
To my moment on the screen.

All my heartfelt tears, I bought,
From sellers with expressive eyes –
I took on ev’rything they taught,
To help me tell more honest lies.
I practised in my dreams each night,
With tailored suits and sexy cars –
I’ve surely breached their copyright,
To fall in love just like the stars.

Read by Hereward

Sleight of Heart

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Flirtation at the Well by Eugene de Blaas

Sleight of Heart

I’m far too smart to believe in magic,
But what the heck have you done to me ?
I know what’s what in law and physics,
But why can’t my mind just let you be ?
I used to scoff at the thought of Hell,
Now I’m shaking and sweating under your spell –
I’m far too smart to believe in magic,
But your bewitching is plain to see.

I feel your beauty cast its glamour,
A wave of the hand, and you lead me on.
I can’t think straight through all this clamour,
I’m a helpless mark for your brazen con.
But worst of all, it’s magic by stealth –
I’ve set my own spell, and upon myself.
I let your beauty cast its glamour
And all of my common sense is gone.

Orogeny

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Photo by Gianluca Grisenti on Pexels.com

Orogeny

You told me how you loved me,
As deep as the magma beneath our very feet –
Erupting, flowing, building, forever,
Melting the stoniest heart with its heat.
You told me how you loved me
As tall as the Andes, and ev’ry bit as tough –
I thought we were raising mountains together,
But in the end, it was nothing but a bluff.