There is a place

This is a poem of pain and hope for the heavy-hearted …

There is a place
where the wind
will not go.
A space
where the gale
will not blow.
And the hurricane
curls up like a ball
and hides.

There is a time
which the dread
cannot invade.
A moment
where you
need not be afraid.
Where terror
sucks its thumb
and rocks.

There is a gaze
which you can
never escape.
A drive where
your life is
on tape.
A love that
cradles the pain
and heals.

Seek it.

14 January 2010

Brandon Cummerbund’s Love Poems – No 7

Tremulous, she was
quite tremulous
But with a right hook
like a pheasant

I loved her dearly
Very very dearly
In fact, so dearly that I was left
destitute
But entranced

Her eyes were like
limpet pools
Pools – full of limpets
Her arms – there were two, as I recall,
One on each side,
Were milky white
White
Like milk

And her hair!
Her hair was
everywhere
I could have bathed in it
Except it was hair, and not water

To me, she shimmered
Particularly after the fifth glass
Her figure was full of curves
It was curved – in all the right places
In all the places, in fact
She undulated like …
she had always undulated.
I believe she learned it in the Far East.

When we first met, she elbowed me in the stomach
Immediately, I felt a connection
She took the wind out of my sails
Although I wasn’t in a boat at the time
And she left me all at sea
Clutching a bag
Of fish

Definitions (of love)

Love is a place
Love is a trace
A crackle of reality that looks you in the face

Love is a fire
Love is a choir
A vulnerability litmus test that makes you feel shyer

Love is a fuel
Love is a school
Love can make the biggest geek feel terminally cool

Love is a walk
Love is a talk
If life’s emotional cutlery then love is the fork

Love is a direction
Love is resurrection
Love is much much much much more than looking for affection

Love is a decision
Love is an incision
Love is in the dictionary listed under contrition

Love is how you live
Love is what you give
Love is what is left when you have learned how to forgive

Feb 08

Love … and things like that

Love part 1

If I learn Esperanto, or Welsh, or Serbo-Croat and can jabber fluently until the cows come home –
wherever they’ve been –
or can talk backwards or in hieroglyphics, or even in genuine angelic lingo,
if I haven’t got love, I might as well sound like the National Kazoo Orchestra played through a blender.
Or a Seventies prog rock band at the wrong speed.

If I can be the fount of all wisdom,
covering everything from knowing the whereabouts of the car keys at all times to accurately predicting the stock exchange,
the 2.15 at Kempton
and whether the chemists round the corner opens late tonight,
but don’t have a loving bone in my body,
I am worth diddlysquat.

Even if I am
more brainy than Stephen Fry,
more hunky than George Clooney and
more peaceful and centred than a barrow full of Dalai Lamas.

Even if I give my entire month’s salary in exchange for a copy of The Big Issue, hand over my house to asylum-seekers
and give up my body for medical research –
while I’m still using it –
if it’s not done with love,
I am no more than a pimple on the backside of humanity.

Love hangs around, and doesn’t mind waiting for the postman.
Or your other half in the bathroom.
Love does good stuff for people without needing to be noticed.
Or kissed.
Love doesn’t sit there skulking because next door’s built an extension.
Or gone to Mauritius.
It’s not into showing off the new car, or saying ‘come round for a meal’ when really you just want to show off number one son’s trophies.
It doesn’t preen.
It doesn’t count among its hobbies road rage,
swearing at the milkman or badmouthing the in-laws.
It’s not bothered with looking after number one.
Love doesn’t fly off the handle at the least excuse, or go looking for fights.
It doesn’t dig up grudges, find axes to grind
or keep an extensive logbook of the times you got it wrong and don’t you forget it.

Love doesn’t side with the bad guys
or count lies as an endearing characteristic of modern day relationships.
It’s more keen on keeping the good things safe than Yale, Chubb and Churchill Insurance.

Love is extremely big on giving you the benefit of the doubt,
taking you at your word
And making you feel you’re better than you actually are.
Love saves small slivers of hope
And builds them into gigantic, monumental mountains of excitement about tomorrow.

Even when life suggests you have as much chance of living long and prospering as a whelk has of winning the Nobel Prize,
love … never … gives … up.

February 2008 – with thanks to 1 Corinthians 13