The Relationship Dance

The dance of loving relationships begins with awkward steps
before it flows and moves toward intimacy.
But intimacy itself cannot deepen or be sustained
unless one is willing to risk
even more difficult steps and emotional maneuvers.
Some of these steps are expressed in the following poems.

 
 
 
Table Of Contents
The Game
After A While
I Love A Man
If Only …
Why Should I Fear To Say His Love Is Mine
Fucking  Game
Something Lost
Tell Me That You Need Me 
The Game
confused and hurt
  and angry
    with you
 for wanting her
and
 pretending
  you didn't want her
when it was obvious
   you did.

please don't lie to me
about lust
 because i understand it.

i wanted someone   tonight
 but
i played the game
  and pretended I didn't.

you should have played the game
 because
now i'm hurting from watching you.

 

Tell me that you need me

This morning you repulsed me once again
And for your own sweet sake I went away
And waited like an inquisitioned Spain
For words to build for me a door to day,
Some structure to the street on which you walk,
Some optimising formula for us
To link our variabilities, some talk
To warm my heart for work, some hair to muss;
And so I trust you not to let me go
Without release, hung up in judgment, dead
To others, fearful to myself, and so
I wait to take to work the words you've said.
       Oh, tell me that you need me, that you live,
       Some part of you at least, on what I give .
I love a man
I love a man -- but I've loved many men.
Each was uniquely beautiful; each knew,
And some returned my love; and now and then
Love lasted longer than a night and grew.
These few were artists, men who looked inside
And painted, sang or prayed what they saw
 there,
A spreading evergreen, Gregorian slide
And rise of ecstasy, or Jacob's stair.
They challenged me to see and feel the same;
Their Genesis, too, was mine; in each was God
In Christ creating us through love.  It came
To me how each was like a lightning rod --
       I love a man, but not just any man
       He was I am before my loves began.


If only 

If I had only half the love I need
To linger on your lips for half my life --
Not then when sleep deep treads upon my greed
But waking, walking, working, when the knife
Of time cuts short the Eros of my hours
Between that dawn and dusk within, that slice
Of breathing time between the greeting flowers
And breath's dank rattle, derelict of death;
If I had only half the love I need
To dip within your blouse, within your eyes,
Within your heart, to martyr self and bleed
The music of my words across the skies --
        But I have more than half and, Oh, it spills
        About me, and that other half -- it kills


 
 

Why should I fear to say his love is mine

Forbidden love is such a worthless term
For what I feel within this useless frame --
So far away, so far as to confirm
That love was not an end, was not the same,
That love was less than every thing I felt,
And underpinning of my every thought,
Not always known, or said, but like a welt
Of stripes so often borne, so often sought
So clearly see by him who only saw
Those things I had to show, who only kissed
(But rarely) what was there beneath the raw
Contusion of a tear, a half clenched fist.
       Why should I fear to say his love is mine
       When even God can mingle love and wine

Fucking  Game
love    is a fucking game

 that two people play…

     choose your player
      roll the dice
      make your move

try to outwit the other
  by planning strategies


Something Lost

we lost something
tonight…
i'm not sure what it was
but I can feel it.

 something
       between us…
 a trust perhaps,
a belief in the honesty
 and sacredness of the other…
      a being true.

it happened quickly
 and I felt it
   move from my body
 just as swiftly and surely
as the
       deer runs
  to quench its thirst.

we lost something
 and I feel the loss.

-- Naomi Redde

After A While

After a while you learn the subtle difference
Between holding a hand and chaining a soul.
And you learn that love doesn't mean leaning
And that company doesn't mean security.
And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts
And that presents aren't promises.

And you begin to accept your defeats
With your head up and your eyes open,
With grace of maturity, not the grief of a child.
And you learn to build all your roads on Today
Because Tomorrow's ground
Is too uncertain for plans, and futures have
A way of falling down in mid-flight.

After a while you learn that even sunshine
Burns if you get too much.
So plant your own garden and decorate
Your own soul, instead of waiting
For someone to bring you flowers.

And you learn that you really can endure...
That you really are strong
And you really do have worth.
And you learn and learn and learn...
With every goodbye you learn.

-- Veronica A. Shoffstall

 

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