A GENTLEMANLY VALENTINE
The Collection of 6 Manly Love Poems
from 2018
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| An antique tete-a-tete Victorian Rococco Revival (love seat) |
Those of us who celebrate the robustness of manliness cannot escape the handsome topic of manly love... While love is undeniably universal we gentlemen certainly have a unique spin on the theme. And that is yet another great mystery of human science that men and women may express themselves differently though speaking from the same emotion... that of love...
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| A Silver Art Deco Champagne Bucket With Cast Foliate Handles |
There too is another spin explaining the way a poet expresses his observations of and insights into love. There are few times that I see love as either wholly perfect or flawed. I believe love is always a variably unbalanced admixture of what men would call good stuff and bad stuff. My optimism allows me to believe that love actually is more positive than negative. I believe from a purely logical perspective one can say that once love has transformed into something that is no longer wholesome it is no longer love...
It is the nature of the world in which we live, a world that has not changed so very much since human civilization began that outside forces as well as internal ones tend to cultivate and deteriorate what men call love. Love is always volatile, unstable, it is always only a summary of the people who define its evolution.
My poems explore both ends of the pendulum, all points along the trajectory and all colors in the spectrum extracting wisdom from the truths and contradictions of love and romance... A summary of love that only documents those things we like about it is false! I am accustomed to digging down into the meat of love in order to discover its secrets. I can be a bit mischievous exploring places I probably should not go to but am compelled to visit because it is right there in front of me overlooked and underestimated by everyone else. I say about love what nobody dares to say...sometimes embarrassing love itself...
The six poems that comprise a Gentlemanly Valentine were part of an effort to craft 14 poems for each day of February leading up to Valentine's Day. Perhaps next year I should be successful at writing all 14. I found that even in the soulful planning of this Valentine's Day presentation I fell short of my ultimate goal much the same as lovers fall short of the realizatiin of their earthly passions.
Notwithstanding, it occurred to me that whilst the goal was arbitrary as it could easily have been 24 poems or simply 1 poem the primary objective had been achieved. What mattered was the content, the honest and bold explication of the phenomenon of manly... that is... gentlemanly love... if I could have conveyed the same message in a single sentence that it took six poems to achieve I should have achieved my goal... But language is intended to be rich and poetry is intended to reflect life using language in ways it has never been used... speaking truths in ways no man has spiken before...
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| Sterling Double Antique Champagne Bucket |
The first poem titled Precipice examines the dynamics that two mature men bringing a great deal of lifes experiences bring to a relationship.
Laid-down-love is an erotic sketch examining or rather re-examining the joys of lovemaking in the horizontal orientation...
In Deepening Waters explores the fear, commitment and hope that intensify as lovers allow themselves to become vulnerable in order to explore selfless love.
Inside of Love explores the boundaries of love in a comparison, contrast to its absence. It is a three-part poem including a prologue preparing the reader for the journey; a testimony that explicates the experience and evaluates love; and finally the reflection poses a sort of moral assessment and challenge.
Bluesmentation is a meditation on failed love a sort of lamentation if you will.
Un-named is a creative fusion of fantasy and reality describing what I want from a lover and what I ultimately get from him.
I hope that you will enjoy this collection of love poems written specially for the occasion of Valentines day of 2018.
BIGDADDY BLUES
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| Antique Chinoiserie Love Seat |
CONTENTS:
1. Precipiece
2. Laid-Down Love
3. In Deepening Waters
4. Inside of Love
5. Bluesmentation
6. un-named
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| Vintage Modern 1970's Love Seat Mediterranean Revival |
Precipice
We shall be strongest in a love that stays,
behind the memory of kisses from more perilous days,
that sued despair turning our finer discernment on,
shoring ‘gainst disillusionments of a handsome, star-dust gaze…
Our story is a secret softly rung,
with keener utterance than native tongue,
its footing imprints the soul of the soul,
sweet as the flowers it walks among…
How many horizons have we farmed for joy,
wearing the innocent placenta of a boy,
immune to the vicissitudes of life's decay,
whenever loves ephemeral vapour is deployed…
By BIGDADDY BLUES
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| Antique French Love Seat |
Laid-down love…
Our favorite sessions ever… quote kinetic extractions from erotic
lessons learnt whilst 180 degrees recumbent...
Recalling the steamy-aura of satin-embraces our figures
briefly puddle in silken hermitage until passion stokes arguments recovering us
for another blaze...
Our expectations return to the horizontal haven where sacred-lust
blinds every other ambition enslaving them to favorite rituals bound by the
helical climb of fused incense and body vapor…
Lovers who are familiar with the landscape make frequent reservations
to pay celebratory homage to laid-down-love...
By BIGDADDY BLUES
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| A Neoclassical Love Seat |
In deepening waters
If living for us
sketches me onto an out-of-body list,
does living for you preclude that,
I no longer exist…
can love replicate the absent-balance of my identity,
while self-sacrifice decorates the alter of love,
and are these offerings the embodiment of truths,
that grow the soul or a slow-drowning in ever-deepening
waters…
By BIGDADDY
BLUES
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| A Victorian Chair Circa 1850's Rococco Revival |
INSIDE OF LOVE
Prologue:
Love has two sides,
we are either outside of it or in…
finding our way back to that most handsome of homes,
finds us living for the promise of belonging there again...
returning purchases our earlier efforts that second chance to
win...
TESTIMONY:
Love is always handsome from the seueded seat of a gentleman's
directive,
that is if you are genuinely in love as opposed to merely-aspiring
to be part of its collective,
when love is a manly goal… disappointments to its ruggedly soulful
objectives,
might build rustic resolutions upon the direction-less escarpments
of loves protectives…
But loves foundations demand precious time for heavy stones to
settle, idling in the iconic muck of consequence, fortified against happenstance
by virtue of the familiar… mired within stagnant pools of the unresolved, love builds
upon its own ruins, crushing them into finer gems whose loveliness is consummated
by a manly fire… belching with blind-certainty from the stubborn crotch of love…
New love gambles the delicate optimism of ideals,
its focus vanquishes the treacherous compromises flirted by our
reals,
should a man's love flourish midst the worlds envenomed subterfuge
and the altruistic emotions he feels,
he would own what few men have… what none can steal...
So then how might a simple man describe the complexity of
love?
Its princely rush brandishes an ennobled blade,
But few men can cut away to its truth?
Its gallantry is too limitless for earthly grade,
but some men's freedom has mustered the conviction to be its
slave?
its passion rarifies our mortal fuel suggesting elements of
which spirit is made,
its measure is exact… to what man can extract burning the
better humours of his being this side of the grave?
that is perhaps why true love cannot fade... ‘gainst it
death cannot degrade,
can men see beyond mortality a sun that cannot wane? Should they
be satisfied with poetic possibilities reason cannot explain?
Should a man recycle what once he imagined love to be, exchanging
values that reckoned boyhood musings for safer postulations of manly possibilities…
or blend what love was with what it appears to be…
Love was an ever-verdant fairway, manicured by myth,
love was a perfect cigar whose robustness lingered to the
pith,
love was the panoramic gallantry blinding failure from
consequence,
It is the monocle of existence… the flux of earthliness, presented
with a gentlemanly handshake entreating us to the world inside of love…
REFLECTION:
Love is the penalty of everyman’s desire,
his happiness lay consumed by the treachery of its fire,
save those who are able to tame its flame,
by living inside of loves own game,
willingly diving upon its mystic pyre,
so brother if you must die then better to burn inside loves
fire…
By BIGDADDY BLUES
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| Sterling Art Nouveau Champagne Bucket |
Bluesmentation
Used to be my boy,
Used to bring me joy,
Used to call your name,
Used to play your games,
Used to fill my nights,
Used to hold you tight,
Used to treat me right,
Used to sing me songs,
Used to treat me wrong,
Used to fill my void,
Used to be my boy,
Used to make me high,
Used to tell me lies,
Used to make my day,
Used to make me pray.
By BIGDADDY BLUES
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| Bent Wood Arts and Crafts Love Seat |
un-named...
I’VE FANTASIED A MAN
WHO’LL READ POETRY WHILE I LAY
FEELING HIS LIPS PRESS WARMLY
AGAINST THE TENSIONS OF THE DAY
STROKING MY CHEST LIKE A DJINIS LAMP
ENCHANTING ME TO SLEEP…
HE’LL DRIFT MY MIND BEYOND
AND NOT BEGRUDGE THE TIME
ENJOYING THE SOFTER PRESENCE
THAT SLEEP HAS GIVEN TO MINE
HE LAY BESIDE ME
AND HOLD ME TILL I WAKE...
THEN HE'LL DRIFT OFF
TO SOMEPLACE I CANNOT GO
AND NO MATTER HOW CLOSELY I HOLD HIM
I CANNOT EVER HOPE TO KNOW
SO I'LL WAIT... CAREFUL NOT TO BREAK HIS SLEEP
EAGER TO WELCOME HIM BACK HOME....
By BIGDADDY BLUES
FIN
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| Hammered Copper and Cast Silver Art Nouveau Champagne Bucket |
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| Copper Art Nouveau Champagne Bucket with Cast-Bronze handles |
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| Copper Art Nouveau Champagne Bucket with Cast-Bronze Handles |
