Love Poems V

LOVE POEMS V These are love poems by Michael R. Burch, about life, the dream of love, virtue, a first kiss, a first crush, the birth of a first relationship, the joy of a first love and a last love, the aching and longing of real love, the passion and confusion and contradictions of love ... Unfoldings by Michael R. Burch Time unfolds... Your lips were roses. ...petals open, shyly clustering... I had dreams of other seasons. ...ten thousand colors quiver, blossoming. Night and day... Dreams burned within me. ...flowers part themselves, and then they close ... You were lovely; I was lonely. ...a virgin yields herself, but no one knows. Now time goes on... I have not seen you. ...within ringed whorls, secrets are exchanged ... A fire rages; no one sees it. ...a blossom spreads its flutes to catch the rain. Seasons flow... A dream is dying. ...within parched clusters, life is taking form... You were honest; I was angry. ...petals fling themselves before the storm. Time is slowing... I am older. ...blossoms wither, closing one last time... I'd love to see you and to touch you. ...a flower crumbles, crinkling, worn and dry. Time contracts... I cannot touch you. ...a solitary flower cries for warmth... Life goes on as dreams lose meaning. ...the seeds are scattered, lost within a storm. Chloe by Michael R. Burch There were skies onyx at night...moons by day... lakes pale as her eyes...breathless winds undressing tall elms...she would say that we loved, but I figured we’d sinned. Soon impatiens too fiery to stay sagged; the crocus bells drooped, golden-limned; things of brightness, rinsed out, ran to gray... all the light of that world softly dimmed. Where our feet were inclined, we would stray; there were paths where dead weeds stood untrimmed, distant mountains that loomed in our way, thunder booming down valleys dark-hymned. What I found, I found lost in her face while yielding all my virtue to her grace. If You Come to San Miguel by Michael R. Burch If you come to San Miguel before the orchids fall, we might stroll through lengthening shadows those deserted streets where love first bloomed... You might buy the same cheap musk from that mud-spattered stall where with furtive eyes the vendor watched his fragrant wares perfume your breasts... Where lean men mend tattered nets, disgruntled sea gulls chide; we might find that cafetucho where through grimy panes sunset implodes... Where tall cranes spin canvassed loads, the strange anhingas glide. Green brine laps splintered moorings, rusted iron chains grind, weighed and anchored in the past, held fast by luminescent tides... Should you come to San Miguel? Let love decide. Vacuum by Michael R. Burch Over hushed quadrants forever landlocked in snow, time’s senseless winds blow... leaving odd relics of lives half-revealed, if still mostly concealed... such are the things we are unable to know that once intrigued us so. Come then, let us quickly repent of whatever truths we’d once determined to learn: for whatever is left, we are unable to discern. There’s nothing left of us here; it’s time to go. The Sky Was Turning Blue by Michael R. Burch Yesterday I saw you as the snow flurries died, spent winds becalmed. When I saw your solemn face alone in the crowd, I felt my heart, so long embalmed, begin to beat aloud. Was it another winter, another day like this? Was it so long ago? Where you the rose-cheeked girl who slapped my face, then stole a kiss? Was the sky this gray with snow, my heart so all a-whirl? How is it in one moment it was twenty years ago, lost worlds remade anew? When your eyes met mine, I knew you felt it too, as though we heard the robin's song and the sky was turning blue. Roses for a Lover, Idealized by Michael R. Burch When you have become to me as roses bloom, in memory, exquisite, each sharp thorn forgot, will I recall?yours made me bleed? When winter makes me think of you? whorls petrified in frozen dew, bright promises blithe spring forsook, will I recall your words?barbed, cruel? First and Last by Michael R. Burch You are the last arcane rose of my aching, my longing, or the first yellowed leaves? vagrant spirals of gold forming huddled bright sheaves; you are passion forsaking dark skies, as though sunsets no winds might enclose. And still in my arms you are gentle and fragrant? demesne of my vigor, spent rigor, lost power, fallen musculature of youth, leaves clinging and hanging, nameless joys of my youth to this last lingering hour. Your Pull by Michael R. Burch You were like sunshine and rain? begetting rainbows, full of contradictions, like the intervals between light and shadow. That within you which I most opposed drew me closer still, as a magnet exerts its unyielding pull on insensate steel. Love Is Not Love by Michael R. Burch Love is not love that never looked within itself and questioned all, curled up like a zygote in a ball, throbbed, sobbed and shook. (Or went on a binge at a nearby mall, then would not cook.) Love is not love that never winced, then smiled, convinced that soar’s the prerequisite of fall. When all its wounds and scars have been saline-rinsed, where does Love find the wherewithal to try again, endeavor, when all that it knows is: O, because! The Stake by Michael R. Burch Love, the heart bets, if not without regrets, will still prove, in the end, worth the light we expend mining the dark for an exquisite heart. The One True Poem by Michael R. Burch Love was not meaningless ... nor your embrace, nor your kiss. And though every god proved a phantom, still you were divine to your last dying atom ... So that when you are gone and, yea, not a word remains of this poem, even so, We were One. The Poem of Poems by Michael R. Burch This is my Poem of Poems, for you. Every word ineluctably true: I love you.