100 Short Love Poems For When You Need A Quick Fix Of Romance

"Love Comes Quietly" by Robert Creeley Love comes quietly, finally, drops about me, on me, in the old ways. What did I know thinking myself able to go alone all the way.

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Lizzy Vera

Lizzy Vera

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"for him" by Rupi Kaur no, it won’t be love at first sight when we meet it’ll be love at first remembrance ‘cause i’ve recognized you in my mother’s eyes when she tells me, marry the type of man you’d want to raise your son to be like.

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Untitled by Rupi Kaur love will come and when love comes love will hold you love will call your name and you will melt sometimes though love will hurt you but love will never mean to love will play no games cause love knows life has been hard enough already

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"[Again and again, even though we know love’s landscape]" by Rainer Maria Rilke Again and again, even though we know love’s landscape and the little churchyard with its lamenting names and the terrible reticent gorge in which the others end: again and again the two of us walk out together under the ancient trees, lay ourselves down again and again among the flowers, and look up into the sky.

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"When You Come" by Maya Angelou When you come to me, unbidden, Beckoning me To long-ago rooms, Where memories lie. Offering me, as to a child, an attic, Gatherings of days too few. Baubles of stolen kisses. Trinkets of borrowed loves. Trunks of secret words, I cry.

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"Twenty-One Love Poems" (Poem II) by Adrienne Rich I wake up in your bed. I know I have been dreaming. Much earlier, the alarm broke us from each other, you’ve been at your desk for hours. I know what I dreamed: our friend the poet comes into my room where I’ve been writing for days, drafts, carbons, poems are scattered everywhere, and I want to show her one poem which is the poem of my life. But I hesitate, and wake. You’ve kissed my hair to wake me. I dreamed you were a poem, I say, a poem I wanted to show someone . . . and I laugh and fall dreaming again of the desire to show you to everyone I love, to move openly together in the pull of gravity, which is not simple, which carries the feathered grass a long way down the upbreathing air.

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"To My Dear and Loving Husband" by Anne Bradstreet If ever two were one, then surely we. If ever man were loved 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. My love is such that rivers cannot quench, Nor ought but love from thee give recompense. Thy love is such I can no way repay; The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray. Then while we live, in love let’s so persever, That when we live no more, we may live ever.

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"Love Is..." by Adrian Henri Love is... Love is feeling cold in the back of vans Love is a fanclub with only two fans Love is walking holding paintstained hands Love is. Love is fish and chips on winter nights Love is blankets full of strange delights Love is when you don't put out the light Love is Love is the presents in Christmas shops Love is when you're feeling Top of the Pops Love is what happens when the music stops Love is Love is white panties lying all forlorn Love is pink nightdresses still slightly warm Love is when you have to leave at dawn Love is Love is you and love is me Love is prison and love is free Love's what's there when you are away from me Love is...

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“When you are Old” by William Butler Yeats When you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face; And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled And paced upon the mountains overhead And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

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“Come, And Be My Baby” by Maya Angelou The highway is full of big cars going nowhere fast And folks is smoking anything that’ll burn Some people wrap their lies around a cocktail glass And you sit wondering where you’re going to turn I got it. Come. And be my baby. Some prophets say the world is gonna end tomorrow But others say we’ve got a week or two The paper is full of every kind of blooming horror And you sit wondering What you’re gonna do. I got it. Come. And be my baby.

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"Untitled" by Christopher Poindexter Whenever I am away from you, The distance between us a burdensome thing, I always think of you in colors, The smell of coffee as you so proudly make it for me, The perfect sunlight spilling through the window. I miss you even when you are beside me. I dream of your body even when you are sleeping in my arms. The words I love you could never be enough. I suppose we’ll have to invent new ones.

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“Love Is A Place” by E.E. Cummings love is a place & through this place of love move (with brightness of peace) all places yes is a world & in this world of yes live (skilfully curled) all worlds

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“She Walks in Beauty” by Lord Byron She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that’s best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes; Thus mellowed to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies. One shade the more, one ray the less, Had half impaired the nameless grace Which waves in every raven tress, Or softly lightens o’er her face; Where thoughts serenely sweet express, How pure, how dear their dwelling-place. And on that cheek, and o’er that brow, So soft, so calm, yet eloquent, The smiles that win, the tints that glow, But tell of days in goodness spent, A mind at peace with all below, A heart whose love is innocent!

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“Sonnet 43” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning 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 every day’s Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light. 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.

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"I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You" by Pablo Neruda I do not love you except because I love you; I go from loving to not loving you, From waiting to not waiting for you My heart moves from cold to fire. I love you only because it’s you the one I love; I hate you deeply, and hating you Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you Is that I do not see you but love you blindly. Maybe January light will consume My heart with its cruel Ray, stealing my key to true calm. In this part of the story I am the one who Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you, Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood.

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"To Be In Love" by Gwendolyn Brooks To be in love Is to touch with a lighter hand. In yourself you stretch, you are well. You look at things Through his eyes. A cardinal is red. A sky is blue. Suddenly you know he knows too. He is not there but You know you are tasting together The winter, or a light spring weather. His hand to take your hand is overmuch. Too much to bear. You cannot look in his eyes Because your pulse must not say What must not be said. When he Shuts a door- Is not there_ Your arms are water. And you are free With a ghastly freedom. You are the beautiful half Of a golden hurt. You remember and covet his mouth To touch, to whisper on. Oh when to declare Is certain Death! Oh when to apprize Is to mesmerize, To see fall down, the Column of Gold, Into the commonest ash.

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"Heart to Heart" by Rita Dove It’s neither red nor sweet. It doesn’t melt or turn over, break or harden, so it can’t feel pain, yearning, regret. It doesn’t have a tip to spin on, it isn’t even shapely— just a thick clutch of muscle, lopsided, mute. Still, I feel it inside its cage sounding a dull tattoo: I want, I want — but I can’t open it: there’s no key. I can’t wear it on my sleeve, or tell you from the bottom of it how I feel. Here, it’s all yours, now— but you’ll have to take me, too.

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"Good Bones" by Maggie Smith Life is short, though I keep this from my children. Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways, a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative estimate, though I keep this from my children. For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird. For every loved child, a child broken, bagged, sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world is at least half terrible, and for every kind stranger, there is one who would break you, though I keep this from my children. I am trying to sell them the world. Any decent realtor, walking you through a real shithole, chirps on about good bones: This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful.

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"Mad Girl's Love Song" by 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.)

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“It is Here” by Harold Pinter What sound was that? I turn away, into the shaking room. What was that sound that came in on the dark? What is this maze of light it leaves us in? What is this stance we take, To turn away and then turn back? What did we hear? It was the breath we took when we first met. Listen. It is here.

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“Love After Love” by Derek Walcott The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror and each will smile at the other's welcome, and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life.

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"A Dream Girl" by Carl Sandburg You will come one day in a waver of love, Tender as dew, impetuous as rain, The tan of the sun will be on your skin, The purr of the breeze in your murmuring speech, You will pose with a hill-flower grace. You will come, with your slim, expressive arms, A poise of the head no sculptor has caught And nuances spoken with shoulder and neck, Your face in pass-and-repass of moods As many as skies in delicate change Of cloud and blue and flimmering sun. Yet, You may not come, O girl of a dream, We may but pass as the world goes by And take from a look of eyes into eyes, A film of hope and a memoried day.

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"Love and Friendship" by Emily Brontë Love is like the wild rose-briar, Friendship like the holly-tree— The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms But which will bloom most constantly? The wild rose-briar is sweet in spring, Its summer blossoms scent the air; Yet wait till winter comes again And who will call the wild-briar fair? Then scorn the silly rose-wreath now And deck thee with the holly’s sheen, That when December blights thy brow He still may leave thy garland green.

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"Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?" (Sonnet 18) by William Shakespeare Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease hath all too short a date. Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimmed; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed; But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st, Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade, When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st. So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

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“Whoso List to Hunt” by Sir Thomas Wyatt Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind, But as for me, hélas, I may no more. The vain travail hath wearied me so sore, I am of them that farthest cometh behind. Yet may I by no means my wearied mind Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore, Sithens in a net I seek to hold the wind. Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt, As well as I may spend his time in vain. And graven with diamonds in letters plain There is written, her fair neck round about: Noli me tangere, for Caesar’s I am, And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.

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tresgatos72

tresgatos72

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He wrote this about Anne Boleyn, after she dumped him for King Henry VIII.

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"Yours" by Daniel Hoffman I am yours as the summer air at evening is Possessed by the scent of linden blossoms, As the snowcap gleams with light Lent it by the brimming moon. Without you I’d be an unleafed tree Blasted in a bleakness with no Spring. Your love is the weather of my being. What is an island without the sea?

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"I carry your heart with me" by E. E. Cummings i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart) i am never without it (anywhere i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling) i fear no fate (for you are my fate,my sweet) i want no world (for beautiful you are my world,my true) and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

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"Falling" by Patrick Phillips The truth is that I fall in love so easily because it’s easy. It happens a dozen times some days. I’ve lived whole lives, had children, grown old, and died in the arms of other women in no more time than it takes the 2-train to get from City Hall to Brooklyn, which brings me back to you: the only one I fall in love with at least once every day— not because there are no other lovely women in the world, but because each time, dying in their arms, I call your name.

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"Habitation" by Margaret Atwood 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

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"Love is a fire that burns unseen" by Luís Vaz de Camões Love is a fire that burns unseen, a wound that aches yet isn’t felt, an always discontent contentment, a pain that rages without hurting, a longing for nothing but to long, a loneliness in the midst of people, a never feeling pleased when pleased, a passion that gains when lost in thought. It’s being enslaved of your own free will; it’s counting your defeat a victory; it’s staying loyal to your killer. But if it’s so self-contradictory, how can Love, when Love chooses, bring human hearts into sympathy?

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"Married Love" by Guan Daosheng You and I Have so much love, That it Burns like a fire, In which we bake a lump of clay Molded into a figure of you And a figure of me. Then we take both of them, And break them into pieces, And mix the pieces with water, And mold again a figure of you, And a figure of me. I am in your clay. In life we share a single quilt. In death we will share a single coffin.

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"For Keeps" by Joy Harjo Sun makes the day new. Tiny green plants emerge from earth. Birds are singing the sky into place. There is nowhere else I want to be but here. I lean into the rhythm of your heart to see where it will take us. We gallop into a warm, southern wind. I link my legs to yours and we ride together, Toward the ancient encampment of our relatives. Where have you been? they ask. And what has taken you so long? That night after eating, singing, and dancing We lay together under the stars. We know ourselves to be part of mystery. It is unspeakable. It is everlasting. It is for keeps.

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"A Love Song for Lucinda" by Langston Hughes Love Is a ripe plum Growing on a purple tree. Taste it once And the spell of its enchantment Will never let you be. Love Is a bright star Glowing in far Southern skies. Look too hard And its burning flame Will always hurt your eyes. Love Is a high mountain Stark in a windy sky. If you Would never lose your breath Do not climb too high.

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"I think I should have loved you presently" by Edna St. Vincent Millay I think I should have loved you presently, And given in earnest words I flung in jest; And lifted honest eyes for you to see, And caught your hand against my cheek and breast; And all my pretty follies flung aside That won you to me, and beneath your gaze, Naked of reticence and shorn of pride, Spread like a chart my little wicked ways. I, that had been to you, had you remained, But one more waking from a recurrent dream, Cherish no less the certain stakes I gained, And walk your memory’s halls, austere, supreme, A ghost in marble of a girl you knew Who would have loved you in a day or two.

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"Echo" by Christina Rossetti Come to me in the silence of the night; Come in the speaking silence of a dream; Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright As sunlight on a stream; Come back in tears, O memory, hope, love of finished years. Oh dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet, Whose wakening should have been in Paradise, Where souls brimfull of love abide and meet; Where thirsting longing eyes Watch the slow door That opening, letting in, lets out no more. Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live My very life again tho’ cold in death: Come back to me in dreams, that I may give Pulse for pulse, breath for breath: Speak low, lean low, As long ago, my love, how long ago.

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"Love’s Philosophy" by Percy Bysshe Shelley The fountains mingle with the river And the rivers with the ocean, The winds of heaven mix for ever With a sweet emotion; Nothing in the world is single, All things by a law divine In one another's being mingle— Why not I with thine? See the mountains kiss high heaven, And the waves clasp one another; No sister-flower would be forgiven If it disdain'd its brother; And the sunlight clasps the earth, And the moonbeams kiss the sea— What is all this sweet work worth If thou kiss not me?

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"It's all I have to bring today" by Emily Dickinson It's all I have to bring today— This, and my heart beside— This, and my heart, and all the fields— And all the meadows wide— Be sure you count—should I forget Some one the sum could tell— This, and my heart, and all the Bees Which in the Clover dwell.

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“Bright Star” by John Keats Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art— Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priestlike task Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores, Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask Of snow upon the mountains and the moors— No—yet still stedfast, still unchangeable, Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast, To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, Awake for ever in a sweet unrest, Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, And so live ever—or else swoon to death.

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"Variations on the Word Love" by Margaret Atwood This is a word we use to plug holes with. It's the right size for those warm blanks in speech, for those red heart- shaped vacancies on the page that look nothing like real hearts. Add lace and you can sell it. We insert it also in the one empty space on the printed form that comes with no instructions. There are whole magazines with not much in them but the word love, you can rub it all over your body and you can cook with it too. How do we know it isn't what goes on at the cool debaucheries of slugs under damp pieces of cardboard? As for the weed- seedlings nosing their tough snouts up among the lettuces, they shout it. Love! Love! sing the soldiers, raising their glittering knives in salute. Then there's the two of us. This word is far too short for us, it has only four letters, too sparse to fill those deep bare vacuums between the stars that press on us with their deafness. It's not love we don't wish to fall into, but that fear. this word is not enough but it will have to do. It's a single vowel in this metallic silence, a mouth that says O again and again in wonder and pain, a breath, a finger grip on a cliffside. You can hold on or let go.

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"Always For The First Time" by André Breton Always for the first time Hardly do I know you by sight You return at some hour of the night to a house at an angle to my window A wholly imaginary house It is there that from one second to the next In the inviolate darkness I anticipate once more the fascinating rift occurring The one and only rift In the facade and in my heart The closer I come to you In reality The more the key sings at the door of the unknown room Where you appear alone before me At first you coalesce entirely with the brightness The elusive angle of a curtain It's a field of jasmine I gazed upon at dawn on a road in the vicinity of Grasse With the diagonal slant of its girls picking Behind them the dark falling wing of the plants stripped bare Before them a T-square of dazzling light The curtain invisibly raised In a frenzy all the flowers swarm back in It is you at grips with that too long hour never dim enough until sleep You as though you could be The same except that I shall perhaps never meet you You pretend not to know I am watching you Marvelously I am no longer sure you know You idleness brings tears to my eyes A swarm of interpretations surrounds each of your gestures It's a honeydew hunt There are rocking chairs on a deck there are branches that may well scratch you in the forest There are in a shop window in the rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette Two lovely crossed legs caught in long stockings Flaring out in the center of a great white clover There is a silken ladder rolled out over the ivy There is By my leaning over the precipice Of your presence and your absence in hopeless fusion My finding the secret Of loving you Always for the first time

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"I Am Not Yours" by Sara Teasdale I am not yours, not lost in you, Not lost, although I long to be Lost as a candle lit at noon, Lost as a snowflake in the sea. You love me, and I find you still A spirit beautiful and bright, Yet I am I, who long to be Lost as a light is lost in light. Oh plunge me deep in love—put out My senses, leave me deaf and blind, Swept by the tempest of your love, A taper in a rushing wind.

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"I Love You" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox I love your lips when they’re wet with wine And red with a wild desire; I love your eyes when the lovelight lies Lit with a passionate fire. I love your arms when the warm white flesh Touches mine in a fond embrace; I love your hair when the strands enmesh Your kisses against my face. Not for me the cold, calm kiss Of a virgin’s bloodless love; Not for me the saint’s white bliss, Nor the heart of a spotless dove. But give me the love that so freely gives And laughs at the whole world’s blame, With your body so young and warm in my arms, It sets my poor heart aflame. So kiss me sweet with your warm wet mouth, Still fragrant with ruby wine, And say with a fervor born of the South That your body and soul are mine. Clasp me close in your warm young arms, While the pale stars shine above, And we’ll live our whole young lives away In the joys of a living love.

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"We Have Not Long to Love" by Tennessee Williams We have not long to love. Light does not stay. The tender things are those we fold away. Coarse fabrics are the ones for common wear. In silence I have watched you comb your hair. Intimate the silence, dim and warm. I could but did not, reach to touch your arm. I could, but do not, break that which is still. (Almost the faintest whisper would be shrill.) So moments pass as though they wished to stay. We have not long to love. A night. A day….

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"When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes" (Sonnet 29) by William Shakespeare 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.

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"To the Desert" by Benjamin Alire Sáenz I came to you one rainless August night. You taught me how to live without the rain. You are thirst and thirst is all I know. You are sand, wind, sun, and burning sky, The hottest blue. You blow a breeze and brand Your breath into my mouth. You reach—then bend Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new. You wrap your name tight around my ribs And keep me warm. I was born for you. Above, below, by you, by you surrounded. I wake to you at dawn. Never break your Knot. Reach, rise, blow, Sálvame, mi dios, Trágame, mi tierra. Salva, traga, Break me, I am bread. I will be the water for your thirst.

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"A Glimpse" by Walt Whitman A glimpse through an interstice caught, Of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a bar-room around the stove late of a winter night, and I unremark’d seated in a corner, Of a youth who loves me and whom I love, silently approaching and seating himself near, that he may hold me by the hand, A long while amid the noises of coming and going, of drinking and oath and smutty jest, There we two, content, happy in being together, speaking little, perhaps not a word.

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"When We Are Old And These Rejoicing Veins" by Edna St. Vincent Millay When we are old and these rejoicing veins Are frosty channels to a muted stream, And out of all our burning their remains No feeblest spark to fire us, even in dream, This be our solace: that it was not said When we were young and warm and in our prime, Upon our couch we lay as lie the dead, Sleeping away the unreturning time. O sweet, O heavy-lidded, O my love, When morning strikes her spear upon the land, And we must rise and arm us and reprove The insolent daylight with a steady hand, Be not discountenanced if the knowing know We rose from rapture but an hour ago.

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"Witch-Wife" by Edna St. Vincent Millay She is neither pink nor pale, And she never will be all mine; She learned her hands in a fairy-tale, And her mouth on a valentine. She has more hair than she needs; In the sun 'tis a woe to me! And her voice is a string of colored beads, Or steps leading into the sea. She loves me all that she can, And her ways to my ways resign; But she was not made for any man, And she never will be all mine.

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"Typewriter Series #2091" by Tyler Knott Gregson I would sleep with the thought of you, With the silhouette Of a single memory, with the scent Left hours later you’ve touched Me. I would lose myself in the folds Of your dress, the fabric Of the shirt you wore when you Fell asleep leaned against my shoulder. Paint me In the soft focus fog of your tenderness, pull me from Myself.

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"Falling Stars" by Rainer Maria Rilke Do you remember still the falling stars that like swift horses through the heavens raced and suddenly leaped across the hurdles of our wishes — do you recall? And we did make so many! For there were countless numbers of stars: each time we looked above we were astounded by the swiftness of their daring play, while in our hearts we felt safe and secure watching these brilliant bodies disintegrate, knowing somehow we had survived their fall.

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“Desire” by Alice Walker My desire is always the same; wherever Life deposits me: I want to stick my toe & soon my whole body into the water. I want to shake out a fat broom & sweep dried leaves bruised blossoms dead insects & dust. I want to grow something. It seems impossible that desire can sometimes transform into devotion; but this has happened. And that is how I've survived: how the hole I carefully tended in the garden of my heart grew a heart to fill it.

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"Somewhere I Have Never Traveled" by E.E. Cummings somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond any experience, your eyes have their silence: in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which i cannot touch because they are too near your slightest look easily will unclose me though i have closed myself as fingers, you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens (touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose or if your wish be to close me, i and my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly, as when the heart of this flower imagines the snow carefully everywhere descending; nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility: whose texture compels me with the color of its countries, rendering death and forever with each breathing (i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens; only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses) nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

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“Untitled” by Aman Batra all things worth keeping begin with your hands please, don’t take me for granted when I say “stay” what I mean is “without you there is no gravity” I was never taught to float, my ascent, anything but graceful you are the uncaged earth soil so rich, I sink and become new

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“Since There’s No Help” by Michael Drayton Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part. Nay, I have done, you get no more of me; And I am glad, yea glad with all my heart, That thus so cleanly I myself can free. Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows, And when we meet at any time again, Be it not seen in either of our brows That we one jot of former love retain. Now at the last gasp of Love’s latest breath, When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies; When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death, And Innocence is closing up his eyes— Now, if thou wouldst, when all have given him over, From death to life thou might’st him yet recover!

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Love’s Language by Ella Wheeler Wilcox How does Love speak? In the faint flush upon the telltale cheek, And in the pallor that succeeds it; by The quivering lid of an averted eye — The smile that proves the parent to a sigh Thus doth Love speak. How does Love speak? By the uneven heart-throbs, and the freak Of bounding pulses that stand still and ache, While new emotions, like strange barges, make Along vein-channels their disturbing course; Still as the dawn, and with the dawn’s swift force — Thus doth Love speak. How does Love speak? In the avoidance of that which we seek — The sudden silence and reserve when near — The eye that glistens with an unshed tear — The joy that seems the counterpart of fear, As the alarmèd heart leaps in the breast, And knows, and names, and greets its godlike guest — Thus doth Love speak. How does Love speak? In the proud spirit suddenly grown meek— The haughty heart grown humble; in the tender And unnamed light that floods the world with splendor; In the resemblance which the fond eyes trace In all fair things to one belovèd face; In the shy touch of hands that thrill and tremble; In looks and lips that can no more dissemble— Thus doth Love speak. How does Love speak? In the wild words that uttered seem so weak They shrink ashamed in silence; in the fire Glance strikes with glance, swift flashing high and higher, Like lightnings that precede the mighty storm; In the deep, soulful stillness; in the warm, Impassioned tide that sweeps through throbbing veins, Between the shores of keen delights and pains; In the embrace where madness melts in bliss, And in the convulsive rapture of a kiss— Thus doth Love speak.

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"To Dorothy" by Marvin Bell You are not beautiful, exactly. You are beautiful, inexactly. You let a weed grow by the mulberry and a mulberry grow by the house. So close, in the personal quiet of a windy night, it brushes the wall and sweeps away the day till we sleep. A child said it, and it seemed true: “Things that are lost are all equal.” But it isn’t true. If I lost you, the air wouldn’t move, nor the tree grow. Someone would pull the weed, my flower. The quiet wouldn’t be yours. If I lost you, I’d have to ask the grass to let me sleep.

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“I loved you first: but afterwards your love” by Christina Rossetti I loved you first: but afterwards your love Outsoaring mine, sang such a loftier song As drowned the friendly cooings of my dove. Which owes the other most? my love was long, And yours one moment seemed to wax more strong; I loved and guessed at you, you construed me And loved me for what might or might not be – Nay, weights and measures do us both a wrong. For verily love knows not ‘mine’ or ‘thine;’ With separate ‘I’ and ‘thou’ free love has done, For one is both and both are one in love: Rich love knows nought of ‘thine that is not mine;’ Both have the strength and both the length thereof, Both of us, of the love which makes us one.

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"Bird-Understander" by Craig Arnold These are your own words your way of noticing and saying plainly of not turning away from hurt you have offered them to me I am only giving them back if only I could show you how very useless they are not

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"Rondel of Merciless Beauty" by Geoffrey Chaucer Your two great eyes will slay me suddenly; Their beauty shakes me who was once serene; Straight through my heart the wound is quick and keen. Only your word will heal the injury To my hurt heart, while yet the wound is clean - Your two great eyes will slay me suddenly; Their beauty shakes me who was once serene. Upon my word, I tell you faithfully Through life and after death you are my queen; For with my death the whole truth shall be seen. Your two great eyes will slay me suddenly; Their beauty shakes me who was once serene; Straight through my heart the wound is quick and keen.

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"Heart, we will forget him!" by Emily Dickinson Heart, we will forget him! You an I, tonight! You may forget the warmth he gave, I will forget the light. When you have done, pray tell me That I my thoughts may dim; Haste! lest while you're lagging. I may remember him!

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"Air and Angels" by John Donne Twice or thrice had I lov'd thee, Before I knew thy face or name; So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame Angels affect us oft, and worshipp'd be; Still when, to where thou wert, I came, Some lovely glorious nothing I did see. But since my soul, whose child love is, Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do, More subtle than the parent is Love must not be, but take a body too; And therefore what thou wert, and who, I bid Love ask, and now That it assume thy body, I allow, And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow. Whilst thus to ballast love I thought, And so more steadily to have gone, With wares which would sink admiration, I saw I had love's pinnace overfraught; Ev'ry thy hair for love to work upon Is much too much, some fitter must be sought; For, nor in nothing, nor in things Extreme, and scatt'ring bright, can love inhere; Then, as an angel, face, and wings Of air, not pure as it, yet pure, doth wear, So thy love may be my love's sphere; Just such disparity As is 'twixt air and angels' purity, 'Twixt women's love, and men's, will ever be.

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"Flirtation" by Rita Dove After all, there’s no need to say anything at first. An orange, peeled and quartered, flares like a tulip on a wedgewood plate Anything can happen. Outside the sun has rolled up her rugs and night strewn salt across the sky. My heart is humming a tune I haven’t heard in years! Quiet’s cool flesh— let’s sniff and eat it. There are ways to make of the moment a topiary so the pleasure’s in walking through.

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"You Are the Penultimate Love of My Life" by Rebecca Hazelton I want to spend a lot but not all of my years with you. We’ll talk about kids but make plans to travel. I will remember your eyes as green when they were gray. Our dogs will be named For Now and Mostly. Sex will be good but next door’s will sound better. There will be small things. I will pick up your damp towel from the bed, and then I won’t. I won’t be as hot as I was when I wasn’t yours and your hairline now so untrustworthy. When we pull up alongside a cattle car and hear the frightened lows, I will silently judge you for not immediately renouncing meat. You will bring me wine and notice how much I drink. The garden you plant and I plan is tunneled through by voles, the vowels we speak aren’t vows, but there’s something holding me here, for now, like your eyes, which I suppose are brown, after all.

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"Poem for My Love" by June Jordan How do we come to be here next to each other in the night Where are the stars that show us to our love inevitable Outside the leaves flame usual in darkness and the rain falls cool and blessed on the holy flesh the black men waiting on the corner for a womanly mirage I am amazed by peace It is this possibility of you asleep and breathing in the quiet air

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"Camomile Tea" by Katherine Mansfield Outside the sky is light with stars; There's a hollow roaring from the sea. And, alas! for the little almond flowers, The wind is shaking the almond tree. How little I thought, a year ago, In the horrible cottage upon the Lee That he and I should be sitting so And sipping a cup of camomile tea. Light as feathers the witches fly, The horn of the moon is plain to see; By a firefly under a jonquil flower A goblin toasts a bumble-bee. We might be fifty, we might be five, So snug, so compact, so wise are we! Under the kitchen-table leg My knee is pressing against his knee. Our shutters are shut, the fire is low, The tap is dripping peacefully; The saucepan shadows on the wall Are black and round and plain to see.

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"Love Elegy in the Chinese Garden, with Koi" by Nathan McClain Near the entrance, a patch of tall grass. Near the tall grass, long-stemmed plants; each bending an ear-shaped cone to the pond’s surface. If you looked closely, you could make out silvery koi swishing toward the clouded pond’s edge where a boy tugs at his mother’s shirt for a quarter. To buy fish feed. And watching that boy, as he knelt down to let the koi kiss his palms, I missed what it was to be so dumb as those koi. I like to think they’re pure, that that’s why even after the boy’s palms were empty, after he had nothing else to give, they still kissed his hands. Because who hasn’t done that— loved so intently even after everything has gone? Loved something that has washed its hands of you? I like to think I’m different now, that I’m enlightened somehow, but who am I kidding? I know I’m like those koi, still, with their popping mouths, that would kiss those hands again if given the chance. So dumb.

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"Love Sonnet XI" by Pablo Neruda I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair. Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets. Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps. I hunger for your sleek laugh, your hands the color of a savage harvest, hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails, I want to eat your skin like a whole almond. I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body, the sovereign nose of your arrogant face, I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes, and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight, hunting for you, for your hot heart, like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.

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"Your Feet" by Pablo Neruda When I cannot look at your face I look at your feet. Your feet of arched bone, your hard little feet. I know that they support you, and that your sweet weight rises upon them. Your waist and your breasts, the doubled purple of your nipples, the sockets of your eyes that have just flown away, your wide fruit mouth, your red tresses, my little tower. But I love your feet only because they walked upon the earth and upon the wind and upon the waters, until they found me.

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"Defeated by Love" by Rumi The sky was lit by the splendor of the moon So powerful I fell to the ground Your love has made me sure I am ready to forsake this worldly life and surrender to the magnificence of your Bering

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"Let me not to the marriage of true minds" (Sonnet 116) by William Shakespeare Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. O no! it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wand'ring bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me prov'd, I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.

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"When I Too Long Have Looked Upon Your Face" by Edna St. Vincent Millay When I too long have looked upon your face, Wherein for me a brightness unobscured Save by the mists of brightness has its place, And terrible beauty not to be endured, I turn away reluctant from your light, And stand irresolute, a mind undone, A silly, dazzled thing deprived of sight From having looked too long upon the sun. Then is my daily life a narrow room In which a little while, uncertainly, Surrounded by impenetrable gloom, Among familiar things grown strange to me Making my way, I pause, and feel, and hark, Till I become accustomed to the dark.

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"Unending Love" by Rabindranath Tagore I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times… In life after life, in age after age, forever. My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs, That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms, In life after life, in age after age, forever. Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, its age-old pain, Its ancient tale of being apart or together. As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge, Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time: You become an image of what is remembered forever. You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount. At the heart of time, love of one for another. We have played alongside millions of lovers, shared in the same Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell- Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever. Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you The love of all man’s days both past and forever: Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life. The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours – And the songs of every poet past and forever.

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"Any Lit" by Harriette Mullen You are a ukulele beyond my microphone You are a Yukon beyond my Micronesia You are a union beyond my meiosis You are a unicycle beyond my migration You are a universe beyond my mitochondria You are a Eucharist beyond my Miles Davis You are a euphony beyond my myocardiogram You are a unicorn beyond my Minotaur You are a eureka beyond my maitai You are a Yuletide beyond my minesweeper You are a euphemism beyond my myna bird

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"Echo" by Carol Ann Duffy I think I was searching for treasures or stones in the clearest of pools when your face… when your face, like the moon in a well where I might wish… might well wish for the iced fire of your kiss; only on water my lips, where your face… where your face was reflected, lovely, not really there when I turned to look behind at the emptying air… the emptying air.

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“Untitled” by Pavana my wounds don't feel like wounds in your hands. they feel like beginnings, like a chance to make things right again.

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"Queen-Anne's Lace" by William Carlos Williams Her body is not so white as anemone petals nor so smooth—nor so remote a thing. It is a field of the wild carrot taking the field by force; the grass does not raise above it. Here is no question of whiteness, white as can be, with a purple mole at the center of each flower. Each flower is a hand's span of her whiteness. Wherever his hand has lain there is a tiny purple blemish. Each part is a blossom under his touch to which the fibres of her being stem one by one, each to its end, until the whole field is a white desire, empty, a single stem, a cluster, flower by flower, a pious wish to whiteness gone over— or nothing.

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"Polarities" by Kenneth Slessor SOMETIMES she is like sherry, like the sun through a vessel of glass, Like light through an oriel window in a room of yellow wood; Sometimes she is the colour of lions, of sand in the fire of noon, Sometimes as bruised with shadows as the afternoon. Sometimes she moves like rivers, sometimes like trees; Or tranced and fixed like South Pole silences; Sometimes she is beauty, sometimes fury, sometimes neither, Sometimes nothing, drained of meaning, null as water. Sometimes, when she makes pea-soup or plays me Schumann, I love her one way; sometimes I love her another More disturbing way when she opens her mouth in the dark; Sometimes I like her with camellias, sometimes with a parsley-stalk, Sometimes I like her swimming in a mirror on the wall; Sometimes I don't like her at all.

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"The Good-Morrow" by John Donne wonder by my troth, what thou and I Did, till we loved? Were we not wean’d till then? But suck’d on country pleasures, childishly? Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den? ’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be; If ever any beauty I did see, Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee. And now good-morrow to our waking souls, Which watch not one another out of fear; For love all love of other sights controls, And makes one little room an everywhere. Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone; Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown; Let us possess one world; each hath one, and is one. My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears, And true plain hearts do in the faces rest; Where can we find two better hemispheres Without sharp north, without declining west? Whatever dies, was not mix’d equally; If our two loves be one, or thou and I Love so alike that none can slacken, none can die.

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"I Love You For What You Are" by Carl Sandberg I love you for what you are, but I love you yet more for what you are going to be. I love you not so much for your realities as for your ideals. I pray for your desires that they may be great, rather than for your satisfactions, which may be so hazardously little. A satisfied flower is one whose petals are about to fall. The most beautiful rose is one hardly more than a bud wherein the pangs and ecstasies of desire are working for a larger and finer growth. Not always shall you be what you are now. You are going forward toward something great. I am on the way with you and therefore I love you.

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"Love Poem" by Audre Lorde Speak earth and bless me with what is richest make sky flow honey out of my hips rigis mountains spread over a valley carved out by the mouth of rain. And I knew when I entered her I was high wind in her forests hollow fingers whispering sound honey flowed from the split cup impaled on a lance of tongues on the tips of her breasts on her navel and my breath howling into her entrances through lungs of pain. Greedy as herring-gulls or a child I swing out over the earth over and over again.

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“Love” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge All thoughts, all passions, all delights, Whatever stirs this mortal frame, All are but ministers of Love, And feed his sacred flame. Oft in my waking dreams do I Live o’er again that happy hour, When midway on the mount I lay, Beside the ruined tower. The moonshine, stealing o’er the scene Had blended with the lights of eve; And she was there, my hope, my joy, My own dear Genevieve! She leant against the arm{‘e}d man, The statue of the arm{‘e}d knight; She stood and listened to my lay, Amid the lingering light. Few sorrows hath she of her own, My hope! my joy! my Genevieve! She loves me best, whene’er I sing The songs that make her grieve. I played a soft and doleful air, I sang an old and moving story— An old rude song, that suited well That ruin wild and hoary. She listened with a flitting blush, With downcast eyes and modest grace; For well she knew, I could not choose But gaze upon her face. I told her of the Knight that wore Upon his shield a burning brand; And that for ten long years he wooed The Lady of the Land. I told her how he pined: and ah! The deep, the low, the pleading tone With which I sang another’s love, Interpreted my own. She listened with a flitting blush, With downcast eyes, and modest grace; And she forgave me, that I gazed Too fondly on her face! But when I told the cruel scorn That crazed that bold and lovely Knight, And that he crossed the mountain-woods, Nor rested day nor night; That sometimes from the savage den, And sometimes from the darksome shade, And sometimes starting up at once In green and sunny glade,— There came and looked him in the face An angel beautiful and bright; And that he knew it was a Fiend, This miserable Knight! And that unknowing what he did, He leaped amid a murderous band, And saved from outrage worse than death The Lady of the Land! And how she wept, and clasped his knees; And how she tended him in vain— And ever strove to expiate The scorn that crazed his brain;— And that she nursed him in a cave; And how his madness went away, When on the yellow forest-leaves A dying man he lay;— His dying words—but when I reached That tenderest strain of all the ditty, My faltering voice and pausing harp Disturbed her soul with pity! All impulses of soul and sense Had thrilled my guileless Genevieve; The music and the doleful tale, The rich and balmy eve; And hopes, and fears that kindle hope, An undistinguishable throng, And gentle wishes long subdued, Subdued and cherished long! She wept with pity and delight, She blushed with love, and virgin-shame; And like the murmur of a dream, I heard her breathe my name. Her bosom heaved—she stepped aside, As conscious of my look she stepped— Then suddenly, with timorous eye She fled to me and wept. She half enclosed me with her arms, She pressed me with a meek embrace; And bending back her head, looked up, And gazed upon my face. ‘Twas partly love, and partly fear, And partly ’twas a bashful art, That I might rather feel, than see, The swelling of her heart. I calmed her fears, and she was calm, And told her love with virgin pride; And so I won my Genevieve, My bright and beauteous Bride.

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“Annabell Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe It was many and many a year ago, In a kingdom by the sea, That a maiden there lived whom you may know By the name of Annabel Lee; And this maiden she lived with no other thought Than to love and be loved by me. I was a child and she was a child, In this kingdom by the sea: But we loved with a love that was more than love– I and my Annabel Lee; With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven Coveted her and me. And this was the reason that, long ago, In this kingdom by the sea, A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling My beautiful Annabel Lee; So that her highborn kinsman came And bore her away from me, To shut her up in a sepulchre In this kingdom by the sea. The angels, not half so happy in heaven, Went envying her and me– Yes!–that was the reason (as all men know, In this kingdom by the sea) That the wind came out of the cloud by night, Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee. But our love it was stronger by far than the love Of those who were older than we– Of many far wiser than we– And neither the angels in heaven above, Nor the demons down under the sea, Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Annabel Lee: For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling–my darling–my life and my bride, In her sepulchre there by the sea, In her tomb by the sounding sea.

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“I Wanna Be Yours…” by John Cooper Clarke I wanna be your vacuum cleaner breathing in your dust I wanna be your Ford Cortina I will never rust If you like your coffee hot let me be your coffee pot You call the shots I wanna be yours I wanna be your raincoat for those frequent rainy days I wanna be your dreamboat when you want to sail away Let me be your teddy bear take me with you anywhere I don’t care I wanna be yours I wanna be your electric meter I will not run out I wanna be the electric heater you’ll get cold without I wanna be your setting lotion hold your hair in deep devotion Deep as the deep Atlantic ocean that’s how deep is my devotion

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"Sylvia" by Sir George Etherege The Nymph that undoes me, is fair and unkind; No less than a wonder by Nature designed. She’s the grief of my heart, the joy of my eye; And the cause of a flame that never can die ! Her mouth, from whence wit still obligingly flows, Has the beautiful blush, and the smell, of the rose. Love and Destiny both attend on her will; She wounds with a look; with a frown, she can kill! The desperate Lover can hope no redress; Where Beauty and Rigour are both in excess! In Sylvia they meet; so unhappy am I ! Who sees her, must love; and who loves her, must die!

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"Beautiful Signor" by Cyrus Cassells Whenever we wake, still joined, enraptured— at the window, each clear night's finish the black pulse of dominoes dropping to land; whenever we embrace, haunted, upwelling, I know a reunion is taking place— Hear me when I say our love's not meant to be an opiate; helpmate, you are the reachable mirror that dares me to risk the caravan back to the apogee, the longed-for arms of the Beloved— Dusks of paperwhites, dusks of jasmine, intimate beyond belief beautiful Signor no dread of nakedness beautiful Signor my long ship, my opulence, my garland beautiful Signor extinguishing the beggar's tin, the wind of longing beautiful Signor laving the ruined country, the heart wedded to war beautiful Signor the kiln-blaze in my body, the turning heaven beautiful Signor you cover me with pollen beautiful Signor into your sweet mouth— This is the taproot: against all strictures, desecrations, I'll never renounce, never relinquish the first radiance, the first moment you took my hand— This is the endless wanderlust: dervish, yours is the April-upon-April love that kept me spinning even beyond your eventful arms toward the unsurpassed: the one vast claiming heart, the glimmering, the beautiful and revealed Signor.

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"Lines Depicting Simple Happiness" by Peter Gizzi The shine on her buckle took precedence in sun Her shine, I should say, could take me anywhere It feels right to be up this close in tight wind It feels right to notice all the shiny things about you About you there is nothing I wouldn’t want to know With you nothing is simple yet nothing is simpler About you many good things come into relation I think of proofs and grammar, vowel sounds, like A is for knee socks, E for panties I is for buttondown, O the blouse you wear U is for hair clip, and Y your tight skirt The music picks up again, I am the man I hope to be The bright air hangs freely near your newly cut hair It is so easy now to see gravity at work in your face Easy to understand time, that dark process To accept it as a beautiful process, your face

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"Poem To An Unnameable Man" by Dorothea Lasky You have changed me already. I am a fireball That is hurtling towards the sky to where you are You can choose not to look up but I am a giant orange ball That is throwing sparks upon your face Oh look at them shake Upon you like a great planet that has been murdered by change O too this is so dramatic this shaking Of my great planet that is bigger than you thought it would be So you ran and hid Under a large tree. She was graceful, I think That tree although soon she will wither Into ten black snakes upon your throat And when she does I will be wandering as I always am A graceful lady that is part museum Of the voices of the universe everyone else forgets I will hold your voice in a little box And when you come upon me I won’t look back at you You will feel a hand upon your heart while I place your voice back Into the heart from where it came from And I will not cry also Although you will expect me to I was wiser too than you had expected For I knew all along you were mine

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"Movement Song" by Audre Lorde I have studied the tight curls on the back of your neck moving away from me beyond anger or failure your face in the evening schools of longing through mornings of wish and ripen we were always saying goodbye in the blood in the bone over coffee before dashing for elevators going in opposite directions without goodbyes. Do not remember me as a bridge nor a roof as the maker of legends nor as a trap door to that world where black and white clericals hang on the edge of beauty in five oclock elevators twitching their shoulders to avoid other flesh and now there is someone to speak for them moving away from me into tomorrows morning of wish and ripen your goodbye is a promise of lightning in the last angels hand unwelcome and warning the sands have run out against us we were rewarded by journeys away from each other into desire into mornings alone where excuse and endurance mingle conceiving decision. Do not remember me as disaster nor as the keeper of secrets I am a fellow rider in the cattle cars watching you move slowly out of my bed saying we cannot waste time only ourselves.

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“Love Is Not A Word” by Riyas Qurana I am a forest When I smile, It goes near the pond And is growing as a mountain If I wink It becomes a whirlwind Falling hairs swept away by waves As streams and rivers And the eyes bouncing in them Multiply as fish. Imagination makes the mind Flying non -stop only with wings Without the bird As the forest shakes with the tireless Cry of the peace (silence?) Amidst all this I keep a falling flower in the mid-air Not to fall on the earth Is it not up to you who search for it To come and sit on it And make love? Don't forget to bring the word Darling When you come.

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"poem I wrote sitting across the table from you" by Kevin Varrone if I had two nickels to rub together I would rub them together like a kid rubs sticks together until friction made combustion and they burned a hole in my pocket into which I would put my hand and then my arm and eventually my whole self-- I would fold myself into the hole in my pocket and disappear into the pocket of myself, or at least my pants but before I did like some ancient star I'd grab your hand

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"To You" by Kenneth Koch I love you as a sheriff searches for a walnut That will solve a murder case unsolved for years Because the murderer left it in the snow beside a window Through which he saw her head, connecting with Her shoulders by a neck, and laid a red Roof in her heart. For this we live a thousand years; For this we love, and we live because we love, we are not Inside a bottle, thank goodness! I love you as a Kid searches for a goat; I am crazier than shirttails In the wind, when you’re near, a wind that blows from The big blue sea, so shiny so deep and so unlike us; I think I am bicycling across an Africa of green and white fields Always, to be near you, even in my heart When I’m awake, which swims, and also I believe that you Are trustworthy as the sidewalk which leads me to The place where I again think of you, a new Harmony of thoughts! I love you as the sunlight leads the prow Of a ship which sails From Hartford to Miami, and I love you Best at dawn, when even before I am awake the sun Receives me in the questions which you always pose.

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“A Red, Red Rose” by Robert Burns O my luve’s like a red, red rose, That’s newly sprung in June; O my luve’s like the melodie That’s sweetly played in tune. As fair art thou, my bonnie lass, So deep in luve am I; And I will luve thee still, my dear, Till a’ the seas gang dry. Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear, And the rocks melt wi’ the sun: O I will love thee still, my dear, While the sands o’ life shall run. And fare thee weel, my only luve, And fare thee weel awhile! And I will come again, my luve, Though it were ten thousand mile.

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"Poem to First Love" by Matthew Yeager To have been told “I love you” by you could well be, for me, the highlight of my life, the best feeling, the best peak on my feeling graph, in the way that the Chrysler building might not be the tallest building in the NY sky but is the best, the most exquisitely spired, or the way that Hank Aaron’s career home-run total is not the highest but the best, the one that signifies the purest greatness. So improbable! To have met you at all and then to have been told in your soft young voice so soon after meeting you: “I love you.” And I felt the mystery of being that you, of being a you and being loved, and what I was, instantly, was someone who could be told “I love you” by someone like you. I was, in that moment, new; you were 19; I was 22; you were impulsive; I was there in front of you, with a future that hadn’t yet been burned for fuel; I had energy; you had beauty; and your eyes were a pale blue, and they backed what you said with all they hadn’t seen, and they were the least ambitious eyes I’d known, the least calculating, and when you spoke and when they shone, perhaps you saw the feeling you caused. Perhaps you saw too that the feeling would stay.

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"The More Loving One" by 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.

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"The Love Poem" by Carol Ann Duffy Till love exhausts itself, longs for the sleep of words - my mistress' eyes - to lie on a white sheet, at rest in the language - let me count the ways - or shrink to a phrase like an epitaph - come live with me - or fall from its own high cloud as syllables in a pool of verse - one hour with thee. Till love gives in and speaks in the whisper of art - dear heart, how like you this? - love's lips pursed to quotation marks kissing a line - look in thy heart and write - love's light fading, darkening, black as ink on a page - there is a garden in her face. Till love is all in the mind - O my America! my new-found land - or all in the pen in the writer's hand - behold, thou art fair - not there, except in a poem, known by heart like a prayer, both near and far, near and far - the desire of the moth for the star.

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"Before You Came" by Faiz Ahmed Faiz Before you came, things were as they should be: the sky was the dead-end of sight, the road was just a road, wine merely wine. Now everything is like my heart, a color at the edge of blood: the grey of your absence, the color of poison, of thorns, the gold when we meet, the season ablaze, the yellow of autumn, the red of flowers, of flames, and the black when you cover the earth with the coal of dead fires. And the sky, the road, the glass of wine? The sky is a shirt wet with tears, the road a vein about to break, and the glass of wine a mirror in which the sky, the road, the world keep changing. Don't leave now that you're here— Stay. So the world may become like itself again: so the sky may be the sky, the road a road, and the glass of wine not a mirror, just a glass of wine.

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"Dear One Absent This Long While" by Lisa Olstein It has been so wet stones glaze in moss; everything blooms coldly. I expect you. I thought one night it was you at the base of the drive, you at the foot of the stairs, you in a shiver of light, but each time leaves in wind revealed themselves, the retreating shadow of a fox, daybreak. We expect you, cat and I, bluebirds and I, the stove. In May we dreamed of wreaths burning on bonfires over which young men and women leapt. June efforts quietly. I’ve planted vegetables along each garden wall so even if spring continues to disappoint we can say at least the lettuce loved the rain. I have new gloves and a new hoe. I practice eulogies. He was a hawk with white feathered legs. She had the quiet ribs of a salamander crossing the old pony post road. Yours is the name the leaves chatter at the edge of the unrabbited woods.

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"Romantics" by Lisel Mueller The modern biographers worry “how far it went,” their tender friendship. They wonder just what it means when he writes he thinks of her constantly, his guardian angel, beloved friend. The modern biographers ask the rude, irrelevant question of our age, as if the event of two bodies meshing together establishes the degree of love, forgetting how softly Eros walked in the nineteenth-century, how a hand held overlong or a gaze anchored in someone’s eyes could unseat a heart, and nuances of address not known in our egalitarian language could make the redolent air tremble and shimmer with the heat of possibility. Each time I hear the Intermezzi, sad and lavish in their tenderness, I imagine the two of them sitting in a garden among late-blooming roses and dark cascades of leaves, letting the landscape speak for them, leaving us nothing to overhear.

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"Valentine" by Carol Ann Duffy Not a red rose or a satin heart. I give you an onion. It is a moon wrapped in brown paper. It promises light like the careful undressing of love. Here. It will blind you with tears like a lover. It will make your reflection a wobbling photo of grief. I am trying to be truthful. Not a cute card or a kissogram. I give you an onion. Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips, possessive and faithful as we are, for as long as we are. Take it. Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding ring, if you like. Lethal. Its scent will cling to your fingers, cling to your knife.

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"Atlas" by U.A. Fanthorpe There is a kind of love called maintenance Which stores the WD40 and knows when to use it; Which checks the insurance, and doesn’t forget The milkman; which remembers to plant bulbs; Which answers letters; which knows the way The money goes; which deals with dentists And Road Fund Tax and meeting trains, And postcards to the lonely; which upholds The permanently rickety elaborate Structures of living, which is Atlas. And maintenance is the sensible side of love, Which knows what time and weather are doing To my brickwork; insulates my faulty wiring; Laughs at my dryrotten jokes; remembers My need for gloss and grouting; which keeps My suspect edifice upright in air, As Atlas did the sky.

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