Showing posts with label unrequited love. Show all posts
Showing posts with label unrequited love. Show all posts

3/3/23

AFTER READING OLD UNREQUITED LOVE POEMS - Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz

If I didn’t think it’d make me appear crazy still,
I’d apologize to you for having been so crazy then.

Reading the poems I had written about “us”
resurrected all that nervous heat, reminded me

of the insistent stutter of my longing,
how I could never just lay it out there for you.

The answer, clearly, would have been
no, thank you. But perhaps that tough line

would have been enough to salvage
all that was good and woolly about us:

your laugh, the golden ring I’d always
stretch a story for; the pair of mittens

we’d split in the cold so we’d each have
a hand to gesture with; how even now,

the paths we took are filled with starry wonder
and all that bright limitless air. I’m sorry

I could never see myself out
of the twitching fever of my heartache,

that I traded everything we had for
something that never ended up being.

But if I could take anything back, it wouldn’t be
the glittering hope I stuck in the amber of your eyes,

or the sweet eager of our conversations.
No, it would be that last stony path

to nothing, when we both gave up without
telling the other. How silence arrived

like a returned valentine on that morning
we finally taught our phones not to ring.

9/24/22

Next Second, You Were Gone - Randall Stephens

I heard about an old broken phone box
Where people would go to have imaginary conversations
At first, I found it foolish
And then I joined the queue.

When my turn came, I dialled your old number.
There was no ringtone, but I told you everything
and I waited in silence
as if you might respond. 

I thought I heard you breathe. 
Then I remembered they told me my life should go on. 
One second, you were here.

10/23/18

HURLING CROWBIRDS AT MOCKINGBARS - Buddy Wakefield

If we were created in God’s image
then when God was a child
he smushed fire ants with his fingertips
and avoided tough questions.

There are ways around being the go-to person.
Even for ourselves.
Even when the answer is clear
like the holy water gentiles were drinking
when they realized

“Forgiveness is the release of all hope for a better past.”

I thought those were chime shells in your pocket
so I chucked a quarter at it
hoping to hear some part of you respond on a high note.

You acted like I was hurling crowbirds at mockingbars
then you abandoned me for not making sense.
Evidently I don’t experience things as rationally as you do.

For example, I know mercy
when I have enough money to change the jukebox
at a gay bar.

You know mercy whenever
someone shoves a stick of morphine
straight up into your heart.

Goddamn it felt amazing
the days you were happy to see me.

So I smashed a beehive against the ocean
to try and make our splash last longer.
Remember all the honey
had me looking like a jellyfish ape
but you walked off the water
in a porcupine of light, strands of gold
drizzled out to the tips of your wasps.

This is an apology letter to the both of us
for how long it took me to let things go.

It was not my intention to make such a production
of the emptiness between us,
playing tuba on the tombstone of a soprano
to try and keep some dead singer’s perspective alive.

It’s just that I could have swore you sung me a love song back there
and that you meant it
but I guess some people just chew with their mouth open.

So I ate ear plugs alive with my throat, hoping they’d get lodged
deep enough inside the empty spots that I wouldn’t have to hear you
leaving, so I wouldn’t have to listen to my heart keep saying
all my eggs were in a basket of red flags, all my eyes to a bucket
of blindfolds in the cupboard with the muzzles and the gauze.

I didn’t mean to speed so far out and off, trying to drive
your nickels to a well
when you were happy to let those wishes drop.

But I still show up for gentleman practice
in the company of lead dancers
hoping their grace will get stuck in my shoes.
Is that a handsome shadow on my breath, sweet woman,
or is it a cattle call in a school of fish? Still

dance with me. Less like a waltz for panic,
more for the way we’d hoped to swing
the night we took off everything
and we were swinging for the fences.

Don’t hold it against my love. You know I wanna breathe deeper
than this. I didn’t mean to look so serious, didn’t mean
to act like a filthy floor, didn’t mean to turn us both
into some cutting board
but there were knives stuck
in the words where I came from.
Too much time in the back of my words.
I pulled knives from my back and my words.
I cut trombones from the moment you slipped away.

And I know it left me lookin’ like a knife fight, lady.
Boy I know it left me feelin’ like a shotgun shell.
You know I know I might’ve gone and lost my breath
but I wanna show you how I found my breath to death.
It was buried under all the wind instruments
hidden in your castanets. Goddamn. If you ever wanna know
how it felt when you left, if you ever wanna come inside
just knock on the spot
where I finally pressed stop

playing musical chairs with your exit signs.

I’m gonna cause you a miracle

when you see the way I kept God’s image alive.

“Forgiveness is for anyone
who needs safe passage through my mind.”

If I really was created in God’s image
then when God was a boy
he wanted to grow up to be a man.
A good man.

And when God was a man - a good man - he started
telling the truth in order to get honest responses.
He’d say,

Yeah, I know… I really should’ve worn my cross.
Again. But I don’t wanna scare the gentiles off.

That is not what I came here to do.
He said,

I’m pretty sure
I just came here to love you.

9/28/18

Popular Romance - Paul Guest

To hum in a smoke-dank alley a song by Elvis
was not the height of my love for you. To turn
my arm from its socket like a hateful thing

was not devotion only. To speak your name
like a spell to my imagined foes was not
peace, no, not ever. Rather, you were a stone

I licked and pretended to eat. You were
ever a dream of falling. An odor of smoke.
You were the design of my worst

crimes. What I stole for love added up.
It added up to nothing. To the air perfumed
by an absent woman. To a box

filled with crushed chalk. God save me
from the stars, once and for all—
I have had enough. Let me love anything

but that: let me go free and dream
of green oceans and the surf
that batters some other world to sleeplessness.

O. It is enough to whisper only
this. To speak to the flame in your breast
and hear nothing else. Once

I believed I could possess
what touched you: the worn sweater,
or the song on the radio

that meant nothing and all in that instant.
Against your door I pressed
my ear, and heard nothing, the whisper

of water, maybe, a breath of cool air—
the gossip of your absence—
and nothing in me could knock or wait,

and all around me the night
spread like water through a rag,
and I let my hands drop whatever they held.

10/8/17

The More Loving One - W. H. Auden

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

3/8/16

THE FAIRY REEL - Neil Gaiman

If I were young as once I was, and dreams
     and death more distant then,
I wouldn't split my soul in two, and keep
     half in the world of men,
So half of me would stay at home, and
     strive for Faërie in vain,
While all the while my soul would stroll up
     narrow path, down crooked lane,
And there would meet a fairy lass and
     smile and bow with kisses three,
She'd pluck wild eagles from the air and
     nail me to a lightning tree
And if my heart would run from her or
     flee from her, be gone from her,
She’d wrap it in a nest of stars and then
     she'd take it on with her
Until one day she'd tire of it, all bored
     with it and done with it
She'd leave it by a burning brook, and off
     brown boys would run with it.
They'd take it and have fun with it and
     stretch it long and cruel and thin,
They'd slice it into four and then they'd
     string with it a violin.
And every day and every night they'd
     play upon my heart a song
So plaintive and so wild and strange that
     all who heard it danced along
And sang and whirled and sank and trod and
     skipped and slipped and reeled and rolled
Until, with eyes as bright as coals, they'd
     crumble into wheels of gold....

But I am young no longer now; for sixty
     years my heart's been gone
To play its dreadful music there, beyond
     the valley of the sun.
I watch with envious eyes and mind, the
     single–souled, who dare not feel
The wind that blows beyond the moon,
     who do not hear the Fairy Reel.
If you don't hear the Fairy Reel, they will
     not pause to steal your breath.
When I was young I was a fool. So wrap
     me up in dreams and death.

12/31/15

"Living on hope is like being locked in a prison cell and the sun is shining so brightly through the window that your eyes become blind to the bars." - Henry Rollins

Living on hope is like being locked in a prison cell and the sun is
shining so brightly through the window that your eyes become blind
to the bars. As soon as you're blind and drunk on hope, they gotcha.

12/16/15

You Must Accept - Kate Light

You must accept that’s who he really is.
You must accept you cannot be his
unless he is yours. No compromise.
He is a canvas on which paint never dries;
a clay that never sets, steel that bends
in a breeze, a melody that when it ends
no one can whistle. He is not who
you thought. He’s not. He is a shoe
that walks away: “I will not go where you
want to go.” “Why, then, are you a shoe?”
“I’m not. I have the sole of a lover
but don’t know what love is.” “Discover
it, then.” “Will I have to go where you go?”
“Sometimes.” “Be patient with you?” “Yes.” “Then, no.”
You have to hear what he is telling you
and see what he is; how it is killing you.

12/11/15

Habits - Nikki Giovanni

i haven’t written a poem in so long
i may have forgotten how
unless writing a poem
is like riding a bike
or swimming upstream
or loving you
it may be a habit that once acquired
is never lost

but you say i’m foolish
of course you love me
but being loved of course
is not the same as being loved because
or being loved despite
or being loved

if you love me why
do i feel so lonely
and why do i always wake up alone
and why am i practicing
not having you to love
i never loved you that way

Mad Girl's Love Song - Sylvia Plath

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

SONGS FOR AN ENDING - Theodore Spencer

                      1

Goodbye, goodbye my darling,
Goodbye to all our past.
Love that hovered trembling
Has sprung away at last.

But Oh before that shudder,
Before that final spring,
The towering of his glory,
The splendor of his wing!

                     2

The quiet and usual word
We took for granted,
The word we wanted
And always heard,
Two vowels, two consonants,
The female and male word
Monosyllabically one
That was our union --
The word 'Love' has fallen
Most suddenly apart,
And my hampered tongue
Lacking the vowels it wants,
Stricken to consonants,
Speaks everything wrong,
Has no speech at all,
Has lost its calling,
The sweet vowels gone.

                     3

Now, my darling,
Oh now good-bye:
Love's wings are furling
In our present sky.
And we walk apart
Away from the other's
Abandoned heart,
While difficultly
The mind smothers
Grief for We
Become You and I.
Oh we walk slowly,
But forever, away
From the once half holy
Place of our day,
Knowing our love
Is done, is done.

Yet though we starve,
Braver alone.

                     4

"The longest love is this:
     To love and not to have.
To thrust love overboard,
     Makes love most safe."

I'd heard such things before;
     Foolish (I thought)
To save by loss.  But now
     I know it's not.

Oh lovers, learn that love
     Does more than drown
When thrust overboard; it forever
     Anchors you for its own. 

7/15/15

Tonight I Can Write The Saddest Lines - Pablo Neruda

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, 'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her voide. Her bright body. Her inifinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.