Speak in Poetry

[JakeTulane]

"Sonnet XVII

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way than this:

where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep. "
— Pablo Neruda

[JakeTulane]

"But I love your feet
only because they walked
upon the earth and upon
the wind and upon the waters,
until they found me."
— Pablo Neruda

[Random]

Originally Posted by JakeTulane

"Sonnet XVII

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way than this:

where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep. "
— Pablo Neruda

This is my favorite Neruda poem...

Thank you... it always makes my soul stutter when I read it...

[Fancy]

My beautiful, bowlegged, jade-eyed tabby
was lounging on the patio
when a sparrow, swooping
down from the blue,

thumped against the screen door. And there
it thrashed, its claws
caught in the mesh.
How swiftly all of this happened

from where I sat on the living room couch
reading about the war—
the cat darted, leapt, his outstretched body
rising and rising

until the sparrow fluttered
in his jaws. No time to think—
the newspaper skated
across the wooden floor,

the door screeched along its track,
my hands clamped around the cat's throat
and squeezed, blood shuttling
quicker through my veins.

Drop it, I commanded,
and he obeyed. And I let go. And the sparrow
scuttled on the concrete
before ruffling a line in the lawn,

then sailed over the trellis
mobbed with lavender flowers,
over a rooftop, the black arrow
of its shadow sliding across the shingles.

The world slowed then, the blood cooled.
Far off, wind jostled wind chimes—
the sound of a broom
endlessly sweeping broken glass.

~David Hernandez

[JakeTulane]

Are you fleeing from Love because of a single humiliation?
What do you know of Love except the name?
Love has a hundred forms of pride and disdain,
and is gained by a hundred means of persuasion.
Since Love is loyal, it purchases one who is loyal:
it has no interest in a disloyal companion.
The human being resembles a tree; its root is a covenant with God:
that root must be cherished with all one's might.
A weak covenant is a rotten root, without grace or fruit.
Though the boughs and leaves of the date palm are green,
greenness brings no benefit if the root is corrupt.
If a branch is without green leaves, yet has a good root,
a hundred leaves will put forth their hands in the end.

- Rumi

[Mitmo01]

Here I love you.
In the dark pines the wind disentangles itself.
The moon glows like phosphorous on the vagrant waters.
Days, all one kind, go chasing each other.

The snow unfurls in dancing figures.
A silver gull slips down from the west.
Sometimes a sail. High, high stars.
Oh the black cross of a ship.
Alone.


Sometimes I get up early and even my soul is wet.
Far away the sea sounds and resounds.
This is a port.

Here I love you.
Here I love you and the horizon hides you in vain.
I love you still among these cold things.
Sometimes my kisses go on those heavy vessels
that cross the sea towards no arrival.
I see myself forgotten like those old anchors.

The piers sadden when the afternoon moors there.
My life grows tired, hungry to no purpose.
I love what I do not have. You are so far.
My loathing wrestles with the slow twilights.
But night comes and starts to sing to me.

The moon turns its clockwork dream.
The biggest stars look at me with your eyes.
And as I love you, the pines in the wind
want to sing your name with their leaves of wire.

Pablo Neruda

[Mitmo01]

Love, we're going home now,
Where the vines clamber over the trellis:
Even before you, the summer will arrive,
On its honeysuckle feet, in your bedroom.

Our nomadic kisses wandered over all the world:
Armenia, dollop of disinterred honey:
Ceylon, green dove: and the YangTse with its old
Old patience, dividing the day from the night.

And now, dearest, we return, across the crackling sea
Like two blind birds to their wall,
To their nest in a distant spring:

Because love cannot always fly without resting,
Our lives return to the wall, to the rocks of the sea:
Our kisses head back home where they belong.

Pablo Neruda

[chefhmboyrd]

there was an old man from nantucket
who had a hole in his bucket
it's no good he found
to carry things round
so he just decided to fuck it

[Nat]

THE SEA said “Come” to the Brook,
The Brook said “Let me grow!”
The Sea said “Then you will be a Sea—
I want a brook, Come now!”

(Emily Dickinson)

[Kätzchen]

Fair river! in thy bright, clear flow
Of crystal, wandering water,
Thou art an emblem of the glow
Of beauty -- the unhidden heart --
The playful maziness of art
In old Alberto's daughter;

But when within thy wave she looks --
Which glistens then, and trembles --
Why, then, the prettiest of brooks
Her worshipper resembles;
For in my heart, as in thy stream,
Her image deeply lies --
The heart which trembles at the beam
Of her soul-searching eyes.

[JakeTulane]

The days of the future stand in front of us
Like a line of candles all alight----
Golden and warm and lively little candles.
The days that are past are left behind,
A mournful row of candles that are out;
The nearer ones are still smoking,
Candles cold, and melted, candles bent.,
I don’t want to see them; their shapes hurt me,
It hurts me to remember the light of them at first.
I look before me at my lighted candles,
I don’t want to turn around and see with horror
How quickly the dark line is lengthening,
How quickly the candles multiply that have been put out.

Constantine P Cavafy

[adorable]

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference

~Robert Frost

[JakeTulane]

"Tell me how many beads there are
In a silver chain
Of evening rain,
Unravelled from the tumbling main..."
~Thomas Lovell Beddoes

[JakeTulane]

By Candlelight

This is winter, this is night, small love ---
A sort of black horsehair,
A rough, dumb country stuff
Steeled with the sheen
Of what green stars can make it to our gate.
I hold you in my arm.
It is very late.
The dull bells tongue the hour.
The mirror floats us at one candle power.

This is the fluid in which we meet each other,
This haloey radiance that seems to breathe
And lets our shadows wither
Only to blow
Them huge again, violent giants on the wall.
One match scratch makes you real.
At first the candle will not bloom at all ---
It snuffs its bud to almost nothing, to a dull blue dud.

I hold my breath until you creak to life,
Balled hedgehog,
Small and cross. The yellow knife
Grows tall. You clutch your bars.
My singing makes you roar.
I rock you like a boat
Across the Indian carpet, the cold floor,
While the brass man
Kneels, back bent as best he can

Hefting his white pillar with the light
That keeps the sky at bay,
The sack of black! It is everywhere, tight, tight!
He is all yours, the little brassy Atlas ---
Poor heirloom, all you have
At his heels a pile of five brass cannonballs,
No child, no wife. Five balls! Five bright brass balls!
To juggle with, my love when the sky falls.

- Sylvia Plath

[JakeTulane]

I Carry your Heart With Me.

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 the 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)

- e.e. cummings

[JakeTulane]

Love, one of a kind, something for you and I to share between us
Made of heaven sent by Venus; Love, moving through me, seeking
a place with in my heart I'm sure of everyone is in and out of....

Love, older than sky, like every cloud that has a silver lining, Love is new and
ever shining, Love falls just like rain, Love is the only thing I know that lasts
through time and even after...that is LOVE.

Love, laughing and high, feeding the magic that I find within me, quicker than the
eye yet simply love warmer than rain, quiet as night but it's stormy in its passion
ancient never out of fashion.

Love, always commands, it never obeys the heart that's bleeding badly, aching
tears of breaking sadly, Love, one of a kind, love is the only thing I know
that lasts through time and even after than forever.

Love, reach out for love, not to be treated for a moment's pleasure, real love is the
lasting treasure , Love, for certain, sure, Love is the only thing I know that lasts
through time and even after than forever.

[JakeTulane]

The light that rises from your feet to your hair,
the strength enfolding your delicate form,
are not mother of pearl, not chilly silver:
you are made of bread, a bread the fire adores.

The grain grew high in its harvest of you,
in good time the flour swelled;
as the dough rose, doubling your breasts,
my love was the coal waiting ready in the earth.

Oh, bread your forehead, your legs, your mouth,
bread I devour, born with the morning light,
my love, beacon-flag of the bakeries:

fire taugh you a lesson of the blood;
you learned your holiness from flour,
from bread your language and aroma.

-Pablo Neruda

[Kätzchen]

Tell me, if I caught you one day
and kissed the sole of your foot,
wouldn't you limp a little then,
afraid to crush my kiss?

~ Nichita Stãnescu

[JakeTulane]

i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite a new thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smoothness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh . . . . And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you quite so new

- e.e. cummings

[Kätzchen]

The world has a thousand creeds, and never a one have I;
Not a church of my own, though a million spires are pointing the way on high.
But I float on the bosom of faith, that bears me along like a river;
And the lamp of my soul is alight with love for life, and the world, and the Giver.

-Ella Wheeler Wilcox
(1850-1919: American poet and writer)