Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Love Not Love (Poem)

This week's Blog Carnival, sponsored by Bridget Chumbley of "One Word at a Time" and Peter Pollock of "Rediscovering the Church", takes as its prompt the word "lust". Below is my offering, a series of poems that can be read separately or all of a piece. Others' contributions, likely to be added throughout the day, are here at Bridget's place.

Love Not Love

Worry
What he takes
As just a silly little feud

His lust
Your wanting

Work out like this:

Even with the furs
Traded as down-payment
He'll leave you cold.

*

Eye roving
Hitting
Missing (mostly)

Wander-lust
Leaves a trail
With no followers

*

She was warned
He wouldn't stand
For ceremony

She got silky words
Surface polished to shiny

So great a luster
For her
Didn't disappoint

It's a matter
Of choice after all

*

He thrummed desire
With the speed a clock
Strikes down seconds

Love you, she'd say
Her heart
Invisibly indivisible

His beat unsoothed
Scanning giver then receiver

Proof enough

Love goes
So far
So far
So far

Copyright © 2010 Maureen E. Doallas. All Rights Reserved.

12 comments:

katdish said...

Maureen - I really liked this. The think I love about poetry (I'm discovering) is the same words can mean something completely different from one reader to the next.

This was my favorite:

She was warned
He wouldn't stand
For ceremony

She got silky words
Surface polished to shiny

So great a luster
For her
Didn't disappoint

It's a matter
Of choice after all

Maureen said...

Thank you for taking time to read and comment, Kathy.

Not only do same words mean different things to different people, the words may have more than one meaning (as in in several places here).

Glynn said...

"Even with the furs/Traded as down-payment/he'll leave you cold." That sound like something Mae West would have said. I love this poem, Maureen, and you captured "lust" perfectly.

Louise Gallagher said...

I love the duality of the words -- I love these poem and lust after your creativity! Hmmm, can I do that? Is it wrong to lust after creativity? Is it like your title, Love but Love not love

Admire but admire not admiration? :)

Maureen said...

Glynn, channeling Mae West, that's got to be a first for me.

Louise, good questions. Be sure to see Glynn's post. Somewhere on Slate is a post by Robert Pinsky that discusses lust in the context of love. He gives some helpful examples.

Joyce Wycoff said...

Maureen ... beautiful exploration of a topic we don't talk much about. thanks.

Anonymous said...

one can meet another in love
but never can lust be met

Anonymous said...

I so enjoy your poetry and thoughts, Maureen.

These words stuck out for me:

Wander-lust
Leaves a trail
With no followers

Maureen said...

Joyce, nAncY, and Bridget, I appreciate each of your comments. And it's fascinating to see which lines strike some meaning for different readers.

Anne Lang Bundy said...

Maureen, you've made me look again at wanderlust.

As someone who's long loved travel, I still dream of all the places I'd like to visit. I suspect my tendency is to wander in my mind with more lust than will give me true contentment for the place the Lord has planted me.

You've awakened my need to revisit "wanderlust."

Helen said...

"He wouldn't stand on ceremony"

Very moving. My heart went out to her.

Diane Walker said...

OMG, this is absolutely delicious -- and adding luster was just a lustrous icing on the cake!

... like Helen, I loved "he wouldn't stand on ceremony." brilliant.

... BTW: I'm a second alto/tenor, too!