Love Poems I
LOVE POEMS I by Michael R. Burch
These are love poems by Michael R. Burch: original poems and translations about passion, desire, lust, sex, a first date and dating, a first crush, a first girlfriend and sweetheart, marriage, a significant other, and an old flame.
Sappho, fragment 42
translation by Michael R. Burch
Eros harrows my heart:
wild winds whipping desolate mountains
uprooting oaks.
Sappho, fragment 155
translation by Michael R. Burch
A short revealing frock?
It's just my luck
your lips were made to mock!
Sappho, fragment 22
loose translation by Michael R. Burch
That enticing girl's clinging dresses
leave me trembling, overcome by happiness,
as once, when I saw the Goddess in my prayers
eclipsing Cyprus.
Negligibles
by Michael R. Burch
Show me your most intimate items of apparel;
begin with the hem of your quicksilver slip ...
Warming Her Pearls
by Michael R. Burch
Warming her pearls,
her breasts gleam like constellations.
Her belly is a bit rotund ...
she might have stepped out of a Rubens.
She bathes in silver
by Michael R. Burch
She bathes in silver,
afloat
on her reflections ...
Are You the Thief
by Michael R. Burch
When I touch you now,
O sweet lover,
full of fire,
melting like ice
in my embrace,
when I part the delicate white lace,
baring pale flesh,
and your face
is so close
that I breathe your breath
and your hair surrounds me like a wreath ...
tell me now,
O sweet, sweet lover,
in good faith:
are you the thief
who has stolen my heart?
The Effects of Memory
by Michael R. Burch
A black ringlet
curls to lie
at the nape of her neck,
glistening with sweat
in the evaporate moonlight ...
This is what I remember
now that I cannot forget.
And tonight,
if I have forgotten her name,
I remember:
rigid wire and white lace
half-impressed in her flesh ...
our soft cries, like regret,
... the enameled white clips
of her bra strap
still inscribe dimpled marks
that my kisses erase ...
now that I have forgotten her face.
Moments
by Michael R. Burch
There were moments full of promise,
like the petal-scented rainfall of early spring,
when to hold you in my arms and to kiss your willing lips
seemed everything.
There are moments strangely empty
full of pale unearthly twilight?how the cold stars stare!?
when to be without you is a dark enchantment
the night and I share.
The Communion of Sighs
by Michael R. Burch
There was a moment
without the sound of trumpets or a shining light,
but with only silence and darkness and a cool mist
felt more than seen.
I was eighteen,
my heart pounding wildly within me like a fist.
Expectation hung like a cry in the night,
and your eyes shone like the corona of a comet.
There was an instant . . .
without words, but with a deeper communion,
as clothing first, then inhibitions fell;
liquidly our lips met
?feverish, wet?
forgotten, the tales of heaven and hell,
in the immediacy of our fumbling union . . .
when the rest of the world became distant.
Then the only light was the moon on the rise,
and the only sound, the communion of sighs.
Righteous
by Michael R. Burch
Come to me tonight
in the twilight, O, and the full moon rising,
spectral and ancient, will mutter a prayer.
Gather your hair
and pin it up, knowing
that I will release it a moment anon.
We are not one,
nor is there a scripture
to sanctify nights you might spend in my arms,
but the swarms
of stars revolving above us
revel tonight, the most ardent of lovers.
Once
by Michael R. Burch
Once when her kisses were fire incarnate
and left in their imprint bright lipstick, and flame,
when her breath rose and fell over smoldering dunes,
leaving me listlessly sighing her name ...
Once when her breasts were as pale, as beguiling,
as wan rivers of sand shedding heat like a mist,
when her words would at times softly, mildly rebuke me
all the while as her lips did more wildly insist ...
Once when the thought of her echoed and whispered
through vast wastelands of need like a Bedouin chant,
I ached for the touch of her lips with such longing
that I vowed all my former vows to recant ...
Once, only once, something bloomed, of a desiccate seed?
this implausible blossom her wild rains of kisses decreed.
For All that I Remembered
by Michael R. Burch
For all that I remembered, I forgot
her name, her face, the reason that we loved ...
and yet I hold her close within my thought.
I feel the burnished weight of auburn hair
that fell across her face, the apricot
clean scent of her shampoo, the way she glowed
so palely in the moonlight, angel-wan.
The memory of her gathers like a flood
and bears me to that night, that only night,
when she and I were one, and if I could ...
I'd reach to her this time and, smiling, brush
the hair out of her eyes, and hold intact
each feature, each impression. Love is such
a threadbare sort of magic, it is gone
before we recognize it. I would crush
my lips to hers to hold their memory,
if not more tightly, less elusively.
Keywords/Tags: love, lost love, romance, romantic love, friendship love, inspirational love, relationship, passion, desire, lust, date, dating, engagement, marriage, wife, crush, sweetheart, flame, lover, girlfriend, significant other
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