possibly
 
 

to wake and find you sitting up in bed with your black hair and gold skin leaning against the white wall a perfect slant of sunlight slashed across your chest as if God were Rembrandt or maybe Ingmar Bergman but luckily it's too early to go to the movies and all the museums are closed on Tuesday anyway I'd rather be with you than in New York or possibly Amsterdam with our eyes and lips and legs and bellies and the sun as big as a house in the sky and five minutes left before the world begins Leslea Newman

I'd rather be with You         than in New York or possiblyAmsterdam

  what does your color red look like ?
 
 

I know nothing about 'love.' I could go on asking for any number of pages about 'love' any number of pages about the word 'love' about any one of all its sounds smells, tastes about any single one of all its meanings. 'Love'? Yes, I have really been thinking There is a cold draught. There is a fire. There is a flush on the poor cheeks no matter how empty and slack and wrinkled they may be. The thighs turn into logs (how do you experience the concept of 'logs'?) in the indifferent wind. The lips become wounds in the dry heat. Heath. Pastureland. Mushrooms unfold through the loose soil. The wind grows stronger more bitter full of shamed memories. There is no road leading away. (I put one foot in front, the other follows) I walk around 'thinking about love' a woman's 'love', an almost old woman's: 'petrified' 'disheveled' 'acidulous' 'insipid' (or, on other occasions, towards other objects) 'self-sacrificing' 'admirable' my own whose, if not mine? I certainly 'love' my cigarettes. The more I run out of them the greater my 'love' of them But I also 'love' the flowers the yellow ones. (how do you experience the color yellow?) and the bluish mauve of butterflies hovering above them. Not so much here when they are all around me as in my imagination. In my imagination there is you, too. In my dreams, there also are 'fathomless' bogs, church steeples swathed in black crepe cripples, rats (surpassing the zoo's) 'indescribable' apparitions 'hypnagogic visions,' I suppose. It happens that I find them enjoyable. Do I 'love' them? In my dreams, there also are eyes (yours) lips, individual hairs, wrinkles, layers of fat, intonations, gestures (yours). It happens that I loathe them. Do I 'love' you? No, I don't know about 'love.' Sonja Akesson

In my dreams, there also are eyes  (yours) lips   It happens that  ILovethem

  a zorro man
 
 

Here in the wombed room silk purple drapes flash a light as subtle as your hands before love-making Here in the covered lens I catch a clitoral image of your general inhabitation long and like a  late dawn in winter Here this clean mirror traps me unwilling in a gone time when I was love and you were booted and brave and trembling for me. Maya Angelou

this clean mirror traps me unwilling in a gone time when I was love

  labysheedy
 
 

I'd make a bed for you in Labasheedy in the tall grass under the wrestling trees where your skin would be silk in the darkness when the moths are coming down. Skin which glistens shining over your limbs like milk being poured from jugs at dinnertime; your hair is a herd of goats moving over rolling hills, hills that have high cliffs and two ravines. And your damp lips would be as sweet as sugar at evening and we walking by the riverside with honeyed breezes blowing over the Shannon and the fuchsias bowing down to you one by one. The fuchsias bending low their solemn heads in obeisance to the beauty in front of them I would pick a pair of flowers as pendant earrings to adorn you like a bride in shining clothes. O I'd make a bed for you in Labasheedy, in the twilight hour with evening falling slow and what a pleasure it would be to have our limbs entwine wrestling while the moths are coming down. Nuala Ni Dhomnaill

And your damp lips would be as sweet as Sugar

  supper
 
 

There is the curdling sky and the green spry beans finger-long and knuckled and the bird's flat fleeting path across my window and still you will not come Alison Fell

love is a wound within the body That has no outward sign. -- Marie de France

  farewell to a trappist
 
 

This then is love -- deep joy that you should be. Though the world's Gadarene ways astound I see you and my heart has found A reason for mankind and an apology. How slight a chance brings on our destiny! If death had come when it was due I should have died as one who never knew, Without this great content to go with me. Immured, you may the Unhorizoned view. In lifelong, solitary thought Your willing heart out of itself will wreak The poet's heaven that you seek, While I, an outer satellite caught, Dear love, see only you. Lucy Boston

This then is love I see You and my heart has found the reason for mankind

  when my desire
 
 

When my desire grows too fierce I wear my bedclothes inside out, dark as the night's rough husk. Ono no Komachi

kin of my skin you are -- Grace Nichols

  I think table and I say chair
 
 

I think table and I say chair, I buy bread and I lose it, whatever I learn I forgot, and what this means is I love you. The harrow says it all and the huddled beggar, the fish that flies through the living room, the bull bellowing in his last corner. Between Santander and Asturias a river runs, deer pass, a herd of saints passes, a great load passes. Between my blood and my tears there is a tiny bridge, and nothing crosses; what this means is I love you. Gloria Fuertes

what this means is I love you

  couple
 
 

Night falls and after night, darkness and after darkness eyes hands and breathing, breathing, breathing . . . and the sound of water dripping from the faucet drop by drop by drop Forugh Farrokhzad

night falls

  fire roses
 
 

Today you grasped the stars as they were slipping off the edge of my horizon and shook them back into the sky. You are quicksilver can leave me slow-footed  wordless. My skin is alive with the soft imprint of your mouth. How many miracles can there be? As I burnt your letters the pages spread and curled bloomed like fire roses Cynthia Fuller

love is a curious mastery, in name alone a felicity -- Marianne Moore

  echo
 
 

Come to me in the silence of the night;    Come in the speaking silence of a dream; Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright    As sunlight on a stream;       Come back in tears, O memory, hope and love of finished years. O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter-sweet,    Whose wakening should have been in Paradise, Where souls brim-full of love abide and meet;    Where thirsting longing eyes       Watch the slow door    That opening, letting in, lets out no more. Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live    My very life again through cold in death; Come back to me in dreams, that I may give    Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:       Speak low, lean low, As long ago, my love, how long ago. Christina Rossetti

Come to me in the silence of the night ;

  come back safely
 
 

Even to say good-bye even if it's the last time even reluctantly even to hurt me again even with the harsh acid of sarcasm that stings even with a new kind of pain even fresh from the embrace of another. Come back, just come. Sylva Gaboudikan

how possibly my love could quit this world and pull down half of heaven when he goes. -- Emily Grosholz