Flash Challenge: Love Letters

[Angeline]

Write a poem about how to write a love letter. Or, if you prefer, write a poem that *is* a love letter. Form or freestyle, erotic or not is up to you. Just do it: write a poem (or two).

 

[Angeline]

You could also write a poem using love letters as a vehicle to a poem about something else, like this excellent example by Juliet Kono. It uses old love letters to anchor a poem that is really about loss.

It's always good to work a prompt into whatever vision your imagination can conceive, right?

 

[Angeline]

lowercase love

I save them stashed
in a carved box that once
held soaps, a fancy schmancy gift
from a long-ago vacation.
When I open it, undo the metal clasp
I get hints of lavender, verbena,
neroli emanating like ghosts.

There are no love letters
in the box. only notes,
homely things scribbled
on paper scraps, left in haste
on the kitchen counter
next to a coffee mug.

Coffee's fresh sweetheart

Gone to have the car washed

Back around three

and always a silly drawing
of you smiling, a heart, a scatter
of X's and O's, sometimes
a declaration of love. So sweet,
so thoughtful.

Sometimes I open the box
and look at them, surrounded
by those faint flowery smells
and thoughts of what once was.

 

[XMarilynX]

@MomTabu I love you Yes I do. You are a pretty girl, Pretty in the head, pretty naked, Pretty Amazing. Your pretty eyes are my mirror, my pretty babe maybe, be a pretty plaything for lonely days at night I. I could tell you all my Pretty secrets: all my Pretty fears,
when I lost my Pretty virginity; -how I found my pretty ugly innocence
again.

Stupidity
is genetically
repeated trust INhuMANity
I hope we could always be

Pretty friends for life when life get’s ugly / lots of self love hugs and kissesx orgasms

M,

 

[Lazaran]

So thirsty

I pour out my heart and soul
a stream of love words
to slake your thirst
will you drink
or not
?

 

[positiveflirt]

"The problem is",
She looks up from the menu like she's about to win the argument,
"You haven't opened that shoebox in years.
Why keep it?
Old words from old relationships, faded and taking up space
Under your bed, in your brain and-"

"And", I'm ready, "As usual you miss the point."
I flash a smile and clink my spoon against the cup
As if I'm ringing the bell.

"I don't keep them to be read, else they would not be hid away
They are the spoils of some of my best days
And those old dead words are not the point,
Not the point."

"Love letters are not about the words on the page
Nor the passionate confessions of where we want our hands
Or how we wish to meet in secret, intertwined and cumming

"They are the everlasting proof
That when two worlds turn together
There are few things more powerful; stronger; more beautiful
And we keep these truths under our beds
Just in case they can somehow someday save us."

She winces.
"I'm still never saying I love you.


But maybe someday I'll write it."

 

[Angeline]

How About You?

Dearest Oscar when I listen
to you play, knowing your sure
dark fingers are dancing
on the keys with poise and grace,
inimitable style somehow
both precise and relaxed

as Ed lightly brushes his snare
in steady 4/4 and sweet Ray
walks that double bass
in tight counterpoint, all three
of you rollicking along clearly
having fun swinging hard--

why I'm there too in a crowded
cabaret, maybe the Famous Door
or any nightclub on 52nd Street

In my little black dress,
silk stockings and impossible
heels, with an icy drink at hand,
Campari and soda or a Sidecar,
hips swaying and caught
in the smoke and low light,
caught in your impeccable jazz,
a sophisticated lady at least
until the song ends.

 

[butters]

My love...

when anger and frustration reign—
resentment at your limitations—
i'd be cool breeze across your plains
rippling grass in waves of zen
wishing you to choose instead
to see yourself as i do

focus on your strengths
your boundless heart
delight in all you can and do accomplish
the list is far from short
and wish your brow to cease its furrow
your lips relax and mirth once more ride forth
and should you need a helping hand
mine are always
always
here

 

[XMarilynX]

MomTabu
You bitch!
I can’t wait
to Top your
Bottom
oo-oo-o
I’m going to
make you cry
come again
come again
tomorrow
because
nothing really
matters
only that
you do.

xxxx

 

[Angeline]

XMarilynX
do you really want to
keep your skirts caught
in my kaleidoscope?

With No escape?
Open your eyes.
Look up at me, I am
your badass goddess

From me you will get
no sympathy. You
will come easy, in a
little high falsetto

juxtaposed with your
little low Hannibal
Lecter finger tips
lock picking

my pirates chest,
I confess, I didn’t
mean to make
you cry—

it’s too late I took your
husband. I took his cock
in my hand and pulled his
trigger until he X’d you

XMarilynX, oo-oo-oo
“I didn't mean to make you cry
If he’s not back again this time tomorrow
Carry on, carry on as if nothing really matters

But Me”

Lol. Clever. Made me think of this song.

 

[Angeline]

WooWee SeXy Meshell Ndegeocello —Meowrrrl Now Back Off Angeline you sexy mama XMarilynX is Mine! purr purr

Mwxxxhaahaa xx We love you @Angeline

Isn't that a great video? Powerful!

 

[Remec]

A Thought in Passing

"Write what you know" is
the saying, right? But, after
all that we went through together,
and, certainly, all the intervening years,
do I even know you?

More to the point, did either of us
ever know more about one another
than how it felt to be touching,
tasting,
fucking ourselves silly,
ignoring the difference in our states;
married versus single,
without dependents versus having the whole
parcel of kids and a dog and all
the time the three of them demanded of you

Was it any wonder that things failed?
That what little leisure you had was being split between
him, me, and doing things for yourself?

But, that's not what I was writing for,
just felt like reminding you that you're still in my
heart the way you're just a thought away
from my mind
I know you liked the windswept poem, but I think
if you knew how much of a Muse you finally became
for me...both form and free verse...it prolly would have
had you scuttling away even moreso than
you had already when you went back to him,
although you left him eventually anyway.

I sometimes wonder how that break up and ours
was similar as well as different,
but you didn't come asking about me,
so I guess that says everything,

Doesn't it?

 

[HarryHill]

Love Poem to/a Sweepstakes

You're too slow,
please send some cash.
I'll never leave your side, baby,
passa dinero, ready let's go?
Say you love me;
say you care.
XXX Harry

 

[Angeline]

Mystifies Me

You were waiting at the airport
in a tweed jacket, purple scarf
and Boston Red Sox baseball cap.

I flew one thousand miles
anxiety and anticipation
making my pulse race,

knowing all I left behind
was irretrievable and you
no more than words in emails,

in messages, poems, a voice
deep and reassuring (Oh honey
you'll always be safe with me

you said), but who gives everything
up for poems, a voice, a promise--
someone crazy as me who flew

so far from home to fly into
your arms, lift my face to yours
and claim your mouth for mine.

Is it always so between lovers,
a magnetic pull that defies reason,
survives years and even death?

 

[Kadyia]

A worn box of letters,
frayed and old.
Five decades past,
He handwrote every word.
Through countless moves,
she kept them safe and stored,
yet never opened the worn box.
Now they remain,
unopened, evermore.

 

[Kadyia]

A worn box of letters,
frayed and old.
Five decades past,
He handwrote every word.
Through countless moves,
she kept them safe and stored,
yet never opened the worn box.
Now they remain,
unopened, evermore.

I'm glad I wrote this before I read Juliet Kono's excellent poem. It would have intimidated me. My grandmother has a box of old love letters. Some day, I plan to read them. She showed me one once. We think of love letters as being romantic. But sometimes they are beautifully prosaic.

 

[Shady_nz]

Dear You,
Writing that message to you
Was one of the most difficult things
I've ever had to do
because I knew, once those words went out, they could
Never be taken back

It was done for love,
Wanting, needing, to push you away
To save you from me
To keep you away so you could
Finally live your life free
Of the burden of me

This was my gift to you
My gift of love
And it's one that I would
Give to you over and over

Me

 

[XMarilynX]

Love is honey with an X

My love is a fatally flawed protagonist
locked in the hidden closet of your chest,

a sight unseen in what seems like decades,
my love fraught in the notes of our two

pressed heated lilies a passed

vision in a voyage sprinkled by our poly
love hunt hungering for the unseen blanks

between our letters, in desire to be where
my hands are freed from every

fraudulent

imagining—

The freshened Sun crawling
kissingly up your new lovers thighs

in a liquid separation of her coverings
Unpartitioned in a love naked and New

as our love is renewed on a voyage
in the blur of birds winging in a momentary

—separation

No words left hanging in the ardor of this new
love assembly un-bottling of binary vinegar

where our ghosts in colloquium can provide the
elegant solution to the spilling of our shared wine

 

[Tzara]

Psychology

However it might have felt,
it probably wasn't love
when she wrote

What I meant to say
was that I want to sleep with you.
Still, it left me jumpy and uncertain

like I was back in college
at a party where this girl I liked
kept looking at me

and I couldn't decide
if she thought I was odd or wanted
me to talk to her out on the porch

where we could actually hear each other
over the too-loud stereo blasting
Talking Heads or the Ramones

and just like then I decided
she didn't really mean anything by it
and instead read a poem

by Anne Sexton about how another lover
had left her feeling desperate
and lonely because

you can't be a poet if you're too happy.
I mean, really. Can you?

 

[sanjuinmood]

The letters I wrote for you
That now form a memory of you
With thousands of lovely dreams
When morning broke
The dreams shaped into flowers
And when the night returned
They turned into stars

 

[Tzara]

Love Letters

Let's face it. I've just got a jones
for reading. It's bad. Real bad.
Like for anything—novels, poems, plays,
court summonses, backs of cereal boxes.
I'll even even sound out things in Czech
or Finnish, though Greek and Amharic,
Cyrillic or Hangul give me fits.
Still, I scan their letters, though.
It's like if I'm not reading
I don't exist. I need it to keep
my heart pumping, the little electric
zaps and zips skipping about my brain.
Kind of like love, I guess. Central
to being, like eating or walking
or touching and being touched
by someone you can't live without.

 

[Angeline]

Groupie

Dear Stephen Stills,
I confess I've had a mad crush
on you since we were young
when you had more hair, less
belly. It wasn't so much your look
as your ringing guitar and oh
those songs. I wanted to be

your Bluebird, even though
I'm more a Brown Eyed Girl.
I could have been your Rock
and Roll Woman: I would have,
well except for my other
mad crush, Steve Winwood
or the dark-eyed Rick Danko
or maybe Levon or possibly
Jimi because Little Wing
makes me swoon.

The girl can't help it!

Music is my pulse, the rhythm
of my heart and other, lower
regions. It all goes back to nights
when my girlish bedroom

was papered with posters.
Daddy would yell up the stairs~
Stop kissing Beatles already
and go to sleep, but damnit
I just couldn't.

 

[Lazaran]

Love’s Letters Lie

Love’s Letters
carved into oak
written on paper
chiseled in stone
Promising Forever

Time
fading
erosion
put lie to
the promise

 

[4degrees]

All the bells jingle
In the wind
I look around,
For all I love
And you are gone again
Just as thin air blows
Making things spin
My mind, my sin
And the silence of alone
Is deafening

 

[Mrtenant]

Love Letter

My dearest love
Passion is thy name
Your pouting lips caressing mine
Sets my world aflame

When last we touched
When last we kissed
That day the sun went dark
We, were not missed

Prowling the campsite
For a moment of time
To kiss, caress, strip you
Claim you, make you mine

How I adored your voice
Stifled moans of pleasure
Your shrieks and gasps
Sounds I will treasure

Best of all, my love
Your deep embraces
Even today, months later
How I do still feel traces

I gazed into your eyes
Held you long in my arms
Fingers though your hair
Caressing your charms

A day to remember
Not just any eclipse
But one in a lifetime
Sky of floating rosehips

My love, my darling
I will count the days
Until next we meet
Offering godly praise