St. Valentine's Day Gifts

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,

I love you simply, without problems or pride:

I love you in this way because I don't know any other way of loving

but this, in which there is no I or you,

so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,

so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.

Western wind, when will thou blow?

The small rain down can rain.

Christ, if my love were in my arms,

And I in my bed again!

I'd rather

heave half a brick than say

I love you, though I do

I'd rather

crawl in a hole than call you

darling, though you are

I'd rather

wrench off an arm than hug you though

it's what I long to do

I'd rather

gather a posy of poison ivy than

ask if you love me

Marriage is not

a house or even a tent

it is before that, and colder:

the edge of the forest, the edge

of the desert

                                                the unpainted stairs

at the back where we squat

outside, eating popcorn

the edge of the receding glacier

where painfully and with wonder

at having survived even

this far

we are learning to make fire

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

I love thee to the level of everyday's

Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.

I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;

I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints,--I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life!--and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

You get tired of all those plums and peaches in lesbian erotica.
Peaches are always popping up in sexy poems and stories,
to suggest breasts, cunts, succulence. You try to avoid them,
but she's making you fall off the wagon.
Peaches are all you think about now--their juice,
their sweaty rilled pits, their fuzzy fuzzy faces.
Falling off the wagon with all those ripesoft peaches rolling around,
bumping fuzzily into each other, cruisin for a bruisin.
Peaches and cream everywhere you look, thinking, she's peachy keen.
At the farmers market you're offered a free one, bite into it
and squirt the farmer in the eye. You buy 2 baskets.
In high school your friend's mum is a home economist,
she makes 12 peach pies in one afternoon. You eat a piece of each,
to be helpful. She asks, which did you like best?
They're all GREAT! you shout, double over and throw up on her shoes.
Seems like you can never keep peaches to yourself.
And now this girl tells you she really hates peaches
because one time peach Kool-Aid came out of her nose.
Instantly you develop a crush. Instantly peaches are important.
Very, because all you know about her is two things:
she is a goddess and she doesn't like peaches.

If ever two were one, then surely we.

If ever man were lov'd by wife, then thee.

If ever wife was happy in a man,

Compare with me, ye women, if you can.

I prize thy love more than whole Mines of gold

Or all the riches that the East doth hold.

Till a' the seas gang dry, my Dear,

And the rocks melt wi' the sun;

I will luve thee still my Dear,

While the sands o' life shall run.

Upon my trouth I say you faithfully

That you are of my life and death the queen,

For with my death the truth shall be seen.

Your eyes two will slay me suddenly.

I may the beauty of them not sustain

So woundeth it thoroughout my heart keen.

You are the Rose of me,

In you have I lost myself utterly,

Your fragrance, as a breath from Paradise,

About me ever lies;

I crush you to my heart with subtlest ecstasy

And on your lips I live, and in your passionate eyes.

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

I've a ring of bright gold, which I gaze on when lonely,

And sigh with Hope's eloquence, "When will it be?"

There needs but thy "Yes," love--one little word only,

So don't tell the world that you're waiting for me.

i like my body when it is with your

body. It is so quite new a thing.

Muscles better and nerves more.

i like your body. i like what it does,

i like its hows.

I want you to see the hole in my shirt where your

heart went through like a Colt 45, and opened

a dream at the back of the neck. Here, let me unbutton it for you.

I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind,

Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng,

Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind;

But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,

Yea, all the time, because the dance was long;

I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

You got me

feeling sad

The worst feeling

I ever had

True wife, housemother, worn with many cares,

Love's afterglow shall brighten all the years

That yet are ours; and closer still shall be our clasp

Of hands, until they nerveless fall and cease to grasp.

Drink to me only with thine eyes,

And I will pledge with mine;

Or leave a kiss but in the cup,

And I'll not look for wine.

Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever;

Do noble things, not dream them, all day long:

And so make life, death, and that vast for-ever

One grand, sweet song.

I know what my heart is like

Since your love died:

It is like a hollow ledge

Holding a little pool

Left there by the tide,

A little tepid pool,

Drying inward from the edge.

Forsake me not thus, Adam! Witness Heav'n

What love sincere and reverence in my heart

I bear thee, and unweeting have offended,

Unhappily deceiv'd! Thy suppliant

I beg, and clasp thy knees. Bereave me not

Whereon I live, thy gentle looks, thy aid,

Thy counsel in this uttermost distress,

My only strength and stay. Forlorn of thee,

Whither shall I betake me, where subsist?

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries

And look upon myself and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,

Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least;

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

Haply I think on thee, and then my state,

Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;

For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings

That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Take pity on your pitying friends!

Nor let your ills affect your mind,

To fancy they can be unkind.

Me, surely me, you ought to spare,

Who gladly would your suff'rings share;

Or give my scrap of life to you,

And think it far beneath your due;

You, to whose care so oft I owe

That I'm alive to tell you so.

They came to tell your faults to me,

They named them over one by one;

I laughed aloud when they were done,

I knew them all so well before, --

Oh, they were blind, too blind to see

Your faults had made me love you more.

Alas, madam, for stealing of a kiss

Have I so much your mind there offended?

Have I then done so grievously amiss

That by no means it may be amended?

Then revenge you, and the next way is this:

Another kiss shall have my life ended,

For to my mouth the first my heart did suck;

The next shall clean out of my breast it pluck.

Did you love well what very soon you left?

Come home and take me in your arms and take

away this stomach ache, headache, heartache.

I wish that I could lie down in your arms

and, turned toward sleep there (later), say, "Goodnight,

love. It was good."

The other props are gone.

Sighing in one another's

Iron arms, propped above nothing,

We praise Love the limiter.

My lizard, my lively writher,

May your limbs never wither ...

Like a spindle, like a dreydl,

I will turn in the center

of my intricate weave

spelling your name in my dance

in my weaving, in my work,

your hidden name which

is simply, finally,

love.

stand to face me beloved

and open out the grace of your eyes

The moth's kiss, first!

Kiss me as if you made believe

You were not sure, this eve,

How my face, your flower, had pursed

Its petals up; so, here and there

You brush it, till I grow aware

Who wants me, and wide ope I burst.



The bee's kiss, now!

Kiss me as if you entered gay

My heart at some noonday,

A bud that dares not disallow

The claim, so all is rendered up,

And passively its shattered cup

Over your head to sleep I bow.

The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be told;

I hunger to build them anew and sit on a green knoll apart,

With the earth and the sky and the water, re-made, like a casket of gold

For my dreams of your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink

Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;

Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink

And rise and sink and rise and sink again;

Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,

Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;

Yet many a man is making friends with death

Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.

It well may be that in a difficult hour,

Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,

Or nagged by want past resolution's power,

I might be driven to sell your love for peace,

Or trade the memory of this night for food.

It well may be. I do not think I would.

I love you at the finish line.

I love you wishing you had run.

I love you saying you will next time.

I love you at the marathon.

Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,

And slips into the bosom of the lake:

So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip

Into my bosom and be lost in me.

Thou art my life, my love, my heart,

    The very eyes of me;

And hast command of every part,

    To live and die for thee.

My heart is like a singing bird

    Whose nest is in a watered shoot;

My heart is like an apple tree

    Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;

My heart is like a rainbow shell

    That paddles in a halcyon sea;

My heart is gladder than all these

    Because my love is come to me.

Raise me a dais of silk and down;

    Hang it with vair and purple dyes;

Carve it in doves and pomegranates,

    And peacocks with a hundred eyes;

Work it in gold and silver grapes,

    In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;

Because the birthday of my life

    Is come, my love is come to me.