I Crave Your Mouth, Your Voice, Your Hair

I Crave Your Mouth, Your Voice, Your Hair

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.


Translated by Stephen Tapscott

Saddest Poem

Saddest Poem

Pablo Neruda

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. 

Write, for instance: "The night is full of stars,
and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance." 

The night wind whirls in the sky and sings. 

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. 

On nights like this, I held her in my arms.
I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky. 

She loved me, sometimes I loved her.
How could I not have loved her large, still eyes? 

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her. 

To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass. 

What does it matter that my love couldn't keep her.
The night is full of stars and she is not with me. 

That's all. Far away, someone sings. Far away.
My soul is lost without her. 

As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.
My heart searches for her and she is not with me. 

The same night that whitens the same trees.
We, we who were, we are the same no longer. 

I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her.
My voice searched the wind to touch her ear. 

Someone else's. She will be someone else's. As she once
belonged to my kisses.
Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes. 

I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her.
Love is so short and oblivion so long. 

Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is lost without her. 

Although this may be the last pain she causes me,
and this may be the last poem I write for her.

Mad Girl's Love Song

Mad Girl's Love Song

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.)"

If You Forget Me

If You Forget Me

Pablo Neruda

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land. 

Lady Lazarus

Lady Lazarus

Sylvia Plath

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it----

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
0 my enemy.
Do I terrify?----

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies

Love

Love

Pablo Neruda

What's wrong with you, with us, 
what's happening to us? 
Ah our love is a harsh cord 
that binds us wounding us 
and if we want 
to leave our wound, 
to separate, 
it makes a new knot for us and condemns us 
to drain our blood and burn together. 

What's wrong with you? I look at you 
and I find nothing in you but two eyes 
like all eyes, a mouth 
lost among a thousand mouths that I have kissed, more beautiful, 
a body just like those that have slipped 
beneath my body without leaving any memory. 

And how empty you went through the world 
like a wheat-colored jar 
without air, without sound, without substance! 
I vainly sought in you 
depth for my arms 
that dig, without cease, beneath the earth: 
beneath your skin, beneath your eyes, 
nothing, 
beneath your double breast scarcely 
raised 
a current of crystalline order 
that does not know why it flows singing. 
Why, why, why, 
my love, why?

One Art

One Art

Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant 
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied.  It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Acquainted With The Night

Acquainted With The Night

Robert Frost

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-by;
And further still at an unearthly height
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

Dream Deferred

Dream Deferred

Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore--
And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Variation On The Word Sleep

Variation On The Word Sleep

Margaret Atwood

I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and as you enter
it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary.

I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You

I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You

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.

I'll meet you in my dreams

by Leah j

As i close my eyes and drifed off to sleep.
i find you in my dreams waiting for me,
i see you in my dreams each and every nite,
and you seem so real to me,

i hear you whisper softly come with me my love,
as we dance the nite away,
i reach for your extended hand and suddenly,
a symphoney begins to play for just us; the most
beautiful music i have ever heard,
you take me lovely into your arms
holding me as if i were royalty as we begin to dance the nite away,

romanticaly we gaze into one and other's eyes
only seeng the beauty of the love we share,
i then feel a kiss gently placed upon my forhead with your tender lips as i return a kiss back replacing it on your cheek.

with words spoken deep with in my heart i look directly into your eyes and tell you,
"my darling, my knight in shining armor,my lover and my friend,
will you ever know how deep my love flows for you? for i will love
you more tomorrow then i love you today" for no other can make me feel this way but you.

i kiss your lips tenderly once more as the dawn of the new day quickly arrives as i softly whisper in you ear, i must leave you now my darling but i'll see you in my dreams tomorrow. till we meet again,
goodbye my love.

In Search Of You

In Search Of You
Author: Himanshu Deshpande

At times in life, when I stop distressed,
To find my wounds, lying undressed;
And pain is all that I can feel,
With no one around, to get me to heal.

At times in life, when I do tire,
Whose company do I admire?
I search  in vain, for a lap to lie,
If not that, just a shoulder to cry.

At times in life, whom do I blame?
When fate plays a nasty game.
Best friends turn bitter foes,
And leave behind a string of throes.

At times in life, when everything's good,
I'm enjoying good wine and delicious food.
Just when I have, forgotten to cry,
With whom do I share this ample joy?

At times in life, when I'm trudging along,
With no one to whom I can belong;
I need nothing, but love that's true,
Which is why I am, in search of you!

Love Abides

Love Abides
Author: Michelle Misty Hamlin

You picked me up and wrapped me 
in a warm blanket of love.
You swept me up and dusted off 
webs of hurts inside.

You gave me warmth
you sheltered me
from life's stormy skies.
Now I live in a home where love abides.

You held me tight.
Where there was darkness,
you gave me light.
Now the world seems real bright.

In the place where love abides,
you showered me with kisses,
saw through my heart to love,
chased away the darkness 
with unconditional love.

Together we dwell forever
in the place where love abides.

No Words

No Words
Author: Richard Hayman Ricky

What is there left
When there is nothing left to say
When you are faced with a choice
Of whether to stay or walk away.

What is there left
When there is nothing left to feel
When you let pride get in the way
And when the problems seem too real.

What is there left
When there is nothing left to be spoken
When you realize it's a new day
But your heart remains broken.

What is there left
When you lose touch
When you finally realize
That she loved you so much.

What is there left
When you cry for her gentle memory
When you cherish all you had
Before her untimely tragedy.

The Hill Of Love

The Hill Of Love
Author: Bernard Pennington

I dream of the hill that we shared
I only then realised how much you cared,
your smiling face your warm embrace
mean the world to me.

The touch of your hand upon my face,
your true love is full of grace.
You touched my inner most feelings,
like you did from the begining.

So much love ,you opened my eyes,
and for me such a beautiful supprise,
I think im dreaming.
We walk down the hill hand in hand
and I think of flower blossoms all around.

Oh my love for you is so honest and true,
just like the first morning dew.
And if dreams can come true,
my love will only be of you.

How I love you my  darling,
If I could make time stand still,
my love would be only of you and the hill.

A Wish

A Wish
Author: Randy Schutte

I lie on the ground,
and stare into space,
the stars start to move,
into the shape of your face.

I see you there now,
looking down at me,
with that cute little smile,
that I like to see.

You say "close your eyes",
"tell me what you see",
I see only two people,
just you and me.

We're walking the shoreline,
with our feet getting wet,
the horizon turns pink,
as the sun starts to set.

We make love through the night,
on that white sandy shore,
then I hold you while thinking,
I could want nothing more.

Oh I wish I could be,
in that one special place,
as I lie on the ground,
and I stare into space.

A BETTER TOMORROW

A BETTER TOMORROW
Author: Yvonne Warren

I never knew there would be a better tomorrow 
But you've come into my life and taken away all my sorrow 

My days of sadness are a thing of the past 
Because I have found true love at last 

My days of emptiness are gone for good 
Because you fill a void in my heart that you should 

You've opened a window 
You've shown me the light 
And my love for you will continue to burn bright. 

A Rose Without You

A Rose Without You
Author: Jonathan Magueflor Cruz

With this rose, I not only give you merely a rose, 
but I give you my heart and soul. 
I send to you all the love I have to give,
and anything else that would give me the 
chance to touch your heart.
   
With this rose, I reveal all my
thoughts and feelings about you
that I have withheld for so long.
I feel when I am with you... I am like a rose, 
not because of it?s beauty, 
but because I am able to bloom and grow with you.
   
To me you are like a rose's sunshine, 
so full of energy and light, 
that never does it fail to lift my spirits. 
Just by the sound of your voice and that look in your eye.
 
I could never tear my eyes from you,
you are able to make my life worth living. 
But, without you, just like a rose, 
I would wither and die. 
Not all at once, but little by little, 
petal by petal. 

Slowly at first, because you have made me 
stronger and stronger each day you're with me.
But eventually, without you, I will loose 
all those beautiful petals you have given me.

Comfort Of Your Love

Comfort Of Your Love
Author: Sunday B. Fakus

You buried my shame in the depth of the sea
And cast my fears to the bed of the ocean.
You carried my hopes to the end of the earth
And enriched my pride with the fruits of love.

As far as the east is from the west,
You removed past guilt from my mind.
As far as the heaven is from the earth,
You sever shame from the contents of my thoughts.

As you build up my faith, mountain high,
You deeply warm my heart with a wondrous smile.
And now, being crowned in the comfort of your love,
You make me rollick in the safety of your arms.