What lips my lips have kissed....

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

I spilled the sauce
all over my burger
and I told him about it.
He said, "That's good Shani,
you should write about it."
So I sat down at my computer
and moved my fingers
and words came out and around
and it was tough for me to reconcile
what I was feeling with what was reality
and mostly I do not miss him
but sometimes I do
and I wonder if he will be in future stories
with me and others too.
But he is a pipedream that is broken
and I no longer want him
for he wrapped me around his little finger
and then he dropped me.
The man I love is the man I will marry.
I can love more than one,
that's true,
but to only one will I promise
my heart, my cage,
my pretty little secret,
the way my eyes shine when he says, "I love you."

Here I stand from afar
watching you live your life
and you don't even know it.
I enjoy being a voyeur,
though the area between my legs
remains as dry as the words
exchanged between us this past year.
I wonder how she'll look
and I wonder how you will too,
her and you
something borrowed, something blue.
Don't you know you invited me
the minute you said hello again
and never said goodbye?
I want you to be in love with her,
I know you are.
I wouldn't want you to be heartbroken too.

Valentine

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.

Carol Ann Duffy

The Red Wing Church

There’s a tractor in the doorway of a church
in Red Wing, Nebraska, in a coat of mud
and straw that drags the floor. A broken plow
sprawls beggarlike behind it on some planks
that make a sort of roadway up the steps.
The steeple’s gone. A black tar-paper scar
that lightning might have made replaces it.
They’ve taken it down to change the house of God
to Homer Johnson’s barn, but it’s still a church,
with clumps of tiger lilies in the grass
and one of those boxlike, glassed-in signs
that give the sermon’s topic (reading now
a bird’ s nest and a little broken glass).
The good works of the Lord are all around:
the steeple top is standing in a garden
just up the alley; it’s a hen house now:
fat leghorns gossip at its crowded door.
Pews stretch on porches up and down the street,
the stained-glass windows style the mayor’s house,
and the bell’s atop the firehouse in the square.
The cross is only God knows where.

Ted Kooser

In Disgrace

Life is absurd. A man can count on that.
After the great triumph, you’re left standing alone,
Standing on the corner, holding your hat,
Trying to call a friend on your cell phone.
Men my age are arrested for public exposure
Who only needed to take a leak in the bushes.
They didn’t run through the park with no clothes or
Flash anyone. Life is like that. Some parts precious,
Moments of glory, and then the need for urination,
Then a disgrace in men’s eyes, and crying bootlessly.
Here I am, a man of a certain reputation,
But your love, darling, is worth all of that to me.
      Were I an outlaw, branded far and wide, No Good,
      You’d love me just the same. I know you would.

Ramon Montaigne

Adage

When it’s late at night and branches
are banging against the windows,
you might think that love is just a matter

of leaping out of the frying pan of yourself
into the fire of someone else,
but it’s a little more complicated than that.

It’s more like trading the two birds
who might be hiding in that bush
for the one you are not holding in your hand.

A wise man once said that love
was like forcing a horse to drink
but then everyone stopped thinking of him as wise.

Let us be clear about something.
Love is not as simple as getting up
on the wrong side of the bed wearing the emperor’s clothes.

No, it’s more like the way the pen
feels after it has defeated the sword.
It’s a little like the penny saved or the nine dropped stitches.

You look at me through the halo of the last candle
and tell me love is an ill wind
that has no turning, a road that blows no good,

but I am here to remind you,
as our shadows tremble on the walls,
that love is the early bird who is better late than never.