It's all about LOVE

                     Be my Valentine!  Sending out hearts to all the people I love.   Love and Valentines Days:  thinking back.  Wow, that girl in fourth grade, Cherie Dedmore.  Surprised I even remembered her name  Wonder if she is still alive.  First girl that I didn't know how to react with--just peach fuzz--you know love is just a four letter word except I didn't have a clue but I knew the word from my dad's service station:  **** which rhymes with lucky.  Didn't know what it meant though.   I knew so little about the four letter word:  LOVE!  And then there was the guilt of the forbidden fruit that Catholic schools and teaching put on our backs. I lived it.  I am a recovering Catholic.  St. Augustine saying," It wasn't an apple on the tree.  It was a pair on the ground."  Sex was made to make you feel dirty and not talked about except in the confessional.  Back in the early sixties sex education was limited to restroom walls and our snickering friends who found their dad's playboy.  I know because at eleven I was the colonel of the urinal at Pop's station.  My duty was to keep the restrooms clean after school.  I read some weird stuff before I scrubbed it off.
                     So, "What's love got to do with it?....(Is love) just a second hand emotion?" sings Tina. There are many kinds of love:  Fraternal, maternal, filial, sororal, unconditional, gay, lesbian, friend, platonic...  I want to talk about romantic love between two "partners for life."  Love and sex.  Sex and love.  One without the other is like a reuben without the pastrami.  A peanut butter sandwich without the peanut butter.  A chocolate cake without the chocolate.  When  two are enjoined, it is possible to experience heaven on earth if only for fleeting moments.  To go somewhere where many people in love have gone before.   In these poems I wish to wax silly like Maccha sang "It's just another silly love song."


              Blue Sky

Kind of blue sounding

People say there have been prettier ones

Than you

But they are now so wrinkled

They have not met

You

I see you I believe

Maybe my eyes were shut

Now I see

You

Where and when I found such luck

Discovering the phantom orchid moth


            Song

When I see you so pink

I think of such incongruity

So bold a clashing color

In this autumn gold Ginkgo time

The sunset deepens on your face

To make the rosy fingered dawn envy

                                                           

Love without reciprocation is sad.

 Checking Out A Library Book

Like so many books on a library shelf

I came and saw you in the stacks

Would I choose knowledge very rare

Borrowing this book

Wanting more than osmotic stew

Standing in front of you  

Looking at so many unknown pages

Grabbing it from the row

Chasing each word as if my last

Tattooing chapters relentlessly on my soul

Feeling needles

Hoping you would read me too

Love the fine print

Then open wide

Hey, we had an earthquake out in Yacolt, Hemingway, just recently.


                    Delirium                                                  


I felt tremors

Aftershocks falling down the Richter scale

Still twenty minutes after

Tremblers

Some adrenaline rush

Like only a stealheader would know

Then times it geometrically

That is true love

It is not all about sex

Your head nuzzled in my arm


And then there is obsession again.

                 Red


She was the devils helper

             Red

I should have known

I could not help myself

I was magnetized to her

Like there was nothing else

That mattered two cloven hooves

I am going to ride it out

The difference between life and living

               Breathing

Breathing in pure oxygen

Then all hell breaks loose

Cant be stopped

             Damned

Happy Valentines Day Star, May, Oliver, Finnian, Caty Lynn, the amazing Maisy, and the beautiful Hannah.

I could go on mushing.