New n Old

 

Bring me no roses, however deep their red,

they bloom for a day, the next morning they droop,

don’t get me orchids in mauve and violet -

none of them are watertight nor weatherproof.

Plant me a night jasmine or a fig instead,

something with a longer arc, a wider sweep,

a deeper tale, not just a trivial vignette,

that will outlast us both and won’t be so brief.

Of course it's Valentine's Day, so I've been writing love poems. This one's an obvious response to roses are red... Apart from that, I've also been looking at the early V-Day posts on this blog. Here's one from Feb 2014, gosh that's 12 years back..

Loveweak I

did my love merit marks - commas, full stops

did it fuel business, make rhymes flow quicker

magic freedom into crystallised hope,

weekend loveshot irises, did it flicker

once in your blingflamed veins and quietly die?

or was it a recurring decimal

sung offkey though holy, strung through your “I”

candied on your tongue like a capital

pulped in your bone in the sponge of marrows?

it asked no marks from me, I can tell you

safely, nothing punctuation, no close

and no throat grabbing start, I never knew

 

what begun and if it’s finished with me yet

it gave no period at this close of sonnet

Well, I was certainly more experimental with my language then! However, the message is the same I find.  Underneath all that drama with no punctuation and portmanteau-ed, coined words. Some things don't change. 

Which one did you like better?