Copyright 1994
THE MOODS OF LOVE
sonnets by Charles Deemer
(Some of these sonnets first appeared in
the chapbook TEN SONNETS [Irvington
Street Press])
TABLE OF CONTENTS
"To take my heart, please take my warts as well!" ......#1
"Take a risk and let me be your love." .................#2
"The skyline hangs above the bay, a mist" ..............#3
"When you touch me, you paint a sky of skin" ...........#4
"Waking in an empty bed, I miss" .......................#5
"In my craft and solitary art," ........................#6
"I nibble at your ear and kiss your neck," .............#7
"The inside of my head is my country." .................#8
"Darling, fear is poison in the heart:" ................#9
"How can the lover love too much? What strange" .......#10
"If our lips should never meet again;" .................#11
"When I contemplate what might have been" ..............#12
"When I loved you, I thought I was happy" ..............#13
"Imagine, if you will, a body tight" ...................#14
"'A woman needs a man like a fish" .....................#15
"Booze has been the mistress of my life," ..............#16
"Life depends on death to draw its breath." ............#17
"Of all affection known to man or beast;" ..............#18
"We who've made mistakes and want to try" ..............#19
"When we hurt the ones we love the most;" ..............#20
"There comes a time to leave the city soon." ...........#21
"If you and I could learn a way to grow" ...............#22
"The more I love myself, the more my love" .............#23
"The smallest things demand the biggest heart." ........#24
"When love is in the heart, the body waits" ............#25
"It's easier to give than to receive." .................#26
"I never loved before as I love now;" ..................#27
#1/
To take my heart, please take my warts as well!
I'm not a perfect man - but still I grow
when most men at my age freeze what they know,
and growth leads where not you or I can tell.
Sometimes I belch! Sometimes I fart and smell!
Sometimes I wake you up before the dawn
and lead you to the kitchen arm-in-arm,
where peanut-buttered pickles ring our bell.
I don't mean all the stuff in marriage vows.
I mean the human truth from A to Z,
and if you find, my dear, that your heart bows
this way - then I'm for you, and you're for me.
What is life without a little fun?
Let me know if you think you're the one.
#2/
Take a risk and let me be your love.
Let me touch your face and kiss your lips.
Let me wrap around you like a glove.
Let me feel the rhythm of your hips.
Let me say sweet nothings in your ear.
Let me bite your nipples just a bit.
Let me be the anchor of your care.
Let me make you laugh with all my wit.
Let me be the smile that stops your frown.
Let me be the friend who never goes.
Let me give you strength when you are down.
Let me lick the wiggle of your toes.
There is nothing mean listed above:
take a risk and let me be your love.
#3/
The skyline hangs above the bay, a mist
of mystery as in a dream, and we
stand close upon the ferry's deck and kiss,
and I feel all the world as it should be.
These are moments that my heart holds dear.
When you are near, somehow I am alive
more than I've been, and everything is clear
to me: I know for what I want to strive.
Yet I don't want my love to burden you,
a chain around your heart, presumption of
your time. The things that I would hope to do
for us are full of caring and my love.
I love you for each moment that I have
and ask from you such love as you can give.
#4/
When you touch me, you paint a sky of skin
that stretches far beyond the reach of bone.
I'm gliding like a hawk upon the wind:
a solitary bird, yet not alone
as long as I'm caressed by stretch of sky,
the hands that touch my skin like shafts of light.
The shadows of my past, the habits of my
life, rise up to try and offer such a fight
that keeps their darkness safe and snug in night.
The beacons of your hands want none of this:
they fondle me, suggesting all I might
become; your lips come forward for a kiss.
Your very touch makes me want to explode,
borning a new life, letting old erode.
#5/
Waking in an empty bed, I miss
the nearness of you, rolling close to kiss
your lips and breast; seeing in your eyes
soft desire that titillates my thighs
and makes me hard; and then I am inside
you, deep as I can get, and pump and ride
you in a rise of lust that will explode
and shoot in you a stream of love and load.
Darling, your sex is like the air I breathe;
a day without and I feel weak in need
of you, hungry for my lips on skin,
thirsty for your juices warm within.
O to wake beside you every morn
and rise to meet the day as if reborn!
#6/
In my craft and solitary art,
so much within myself most of the day,
I never feel that we are far apart,
even though I do not know the way
we'll finally come to touch and best connect.
So much within myself, I look to you
for human warmth that body resurrects
from mind. A single touch by you can do
what thinking never does: turn language off
and bring my feelings to the fore, a kiss
of life to energize the soul and doff
these lettered clothes I often wear amiss.
Your touch can make my body want to sing.
Your touch can cause my very soul to sing!
#7/
I nibble at your ear and kiss your neck,
stroke your arm and press against your side;
my tongue kisses your back and starts to lick
its way to finding secrets that you hide.
My hands caress your butt and then your thighs,
my fingers slide between your buttock's crack;
they search for those warm juices that your sighs
exhale like beads of sweat upon your back.
My finger finds the wonder of your clit,
massaging it to swell up like a pearl,
until you cannot get enough of it:
your mind is all a-frenzy in a whirl
as both my fingers enter deep inside
and you begin to sway and rock and ride . . .
#8/
The inside of my head is my country.
It does not matter whether trees and lakes
surround me; whether gulls above the sea
adorn my walk; whether sunsets make
the curtain of my day. My own thoughts
are scenery enough.
What my thoughts need
is ground. The dazzling dance of thinking, caught
up in itself, can recklessly not heed
anything but its own reward. Mind
for mind's sake is no way to live a life.
I need the space where mind can best unwind.
I need the sheath in which to rest the knife.
I need, darling, for you to come to me.
The inside of my head is my country.
#9/
Darling, fear is poison in the heart:
fear will never grow or take a risk;
fear goes with the flow, pulls us apart
who would embrace, denies the moment kissed
that makes us whole. Fear is like a sleep
that kills the soul, that cramps the very style
of life lived full and free, a germ that creeps
into the heart, a poison cruel and vile,
that kills the best we are and can become.
How I wish that we would make the leap
for love, for passion, leaving nothing numb
but all aflame in heat that lovers weep.
I am not afraid to love you true.
Now I wait to see what you will do.
#10/
How can the lover love too much? What strange
emotions put the heart's best suit of clothes
to ruin, to the opposite of the range
of feelings proper to it? How can woes
from love be born - and still be love? Is this
hallucination or something worse, a kiss
that bites, that poisons all that's sweet and fine
and turns to vinegar the finest rarest wine?
I think I'm ill. I think I go insane
from too much heart, too tender skin, too thin
a shield to protect me from the state I'm in.
I think I have no one but self to blame.
And here's the rub: knowing does no good
to help a heart love sanely, as it should.
#11/
If our lips should never meet again;
if your arms should not around me wrap
in such a way to tell me of your ken;
if our bodies never draw the sap
each from each, flesh to flesh, the way
we've done before in miracles of night;
if it doesn't happen how it may
have been between us if my health was right;
if, I say, all dreams are lost and barn
doors closed; if this should be, my heart of hearts,
do not grieve for us or weep or mourn.
For a brief time we knew Cupid's darts!
Cherish the way women can touch men,
instead of pining for what might have been.
#12/
When I contemplate what might have been
if everything I wished had come to be;
when I see myself and you as kin,
with children in a loving family;
when I think of how we were at best
in moments that, sadly, were far too few
(and how conveniently all the rest
is dismissed like some forgotten cue);
when I wonder what went wrong and why,
and how it is that I have changed so much
that now it's hard to believe you've made me cry
- and did I really hunger for your touch?:
then, darling, I realize where we've been
and what you meant when you said, "be my friend."
#13/
When I loved you, I thought I was happy
and never would I feel again remorse.
In fact, the whole shebang was quite sappy
crap: the usual cart before the horse.
When I loved you, I believed the words you said:
except the one clear time you told the truth
and told me you're neurotic in the head,
as dangerous as gin without vermouth.
When I loved you - o I was drunk with love!
For you, I'd fight the mighty dinosaur!
(I surely must be blessed by stars above
to feel love that is only known in lore.)
When I loved you, I did not have a fear.
The worst deafness is in the inner ear.
#14/
Imagine, if you will, a body tight
with stress; add a mind pickled with booze;
throw in a heart grown cynical by night,
by day asleep; put in the daily news
to taste; cowardice will keep the blend
alive, no falling soufle here; somewhere
there must be a past, memories of when
the world was right; yes, the mouth can drool
a bit; a tired dick grotesquely hangs
its chicken's neck southward like a fool
(a dick always points northward when it bangs):
all this - and then let enter Special She.
Witness resurrection of the He.
#15/
"A woman needs a man like a fish
needs a bike," she said before she kissed
him on the lips. Wondering what he missed,
he kissed back, which he later wished
he hadn't done because the police just stared
at him as he stammered through the story
that was his version of events, how sorry
he was about the whole thing, more weird
than anything else, there had been no rape
at all, unless his tongue was charged, and she
had started that, this he guaranteed,
he was a gentleman and not an ape.
Q: what in common have King Kong and Tristan?
A: a fish, a bike, an ape . . . Woman and Man.
#16/
Booze has been the mistress of my life,
to whose charms a lover had no chance.
Booze has been my mother and my wife,
the only music that got me to dance.
Booze has listened long at boring tales
(repeated more than once) of escapades
blown up to feats of strength by silly males
who brag before they learn that youth will fade.
No wonder I'm alone. More wonder still
that I have known a bit of love in life,
that I have done my work, been seldom ill.
But I have laughed whenever faced with strife
and never let myself openly cry.
I need to be reborn - and reborn dry.
#17/
Life depends on death to draw its breath.
No seed can grow without a wealth of rot.
A baby cannot inhale its first breath
without parental health that (more than not)
has grown and risen upon ash and bone.
Nature knows this well: what life eats
is what life will become. We stand alone
who fail to use the fuel that always meets
demise. Our eyes are blind, our minds a blank,
who think we stand apart from this. Our kiss
with swollen eyes upon the corpse is rank,
it always is ourselves we lose and miss.
So silly, then, to whine with false bereft
when life depends on death to draw its breath.
#18/
Of all affection known to man or beast;
of all the ways we relate each to each,
to talk, embrace and cry, and try to teach
the other who we are: the very feast
of love, without which at the very least
would life be insecure and at such risk
that death might well win out; the soft kiss
of love the mother gives her child, her breast
the suckled nourishment of all s/he knows -
this is love that cannot be more pure.
Male lovers in their quest of love bestow
romance as often illness as its cure.
Love is not the sting of Cupid's darts;
Love is the most womanly of arts.
#19/
We who've made mistakes and want to try
to do it right over-compensate,
perhaps, by making overly innate
judgments based on all our history.
But what is growth if not something new?
Can what is new be plugged into the past
like numbers in a formula? A vast
array of possibility that few
embrace gets lost with such a rigid frame
of mind. Rigidity is safe, of course
(though maybe it's the cart before the horse),
and one who never dares is never lame.
If I am lame, at least I took a chance
and failure is my own - not happenstance.
#20/
When we hurt the ones we love the most;
when the alchemy of love will change
the sweetest songs of which lovers boast
into noise so dreary in its range
of pain that gold to lead would seem a finer
change; when dreams are pipe dreams, hope gets lost
and birds take to wing to find a kinder
sky; when the heart no longer pays the cost
of love; then the world can seem a sadder
place than it used to be, or is, or would
be again whenever centers matter
more than raw emotions ever should.
This center is the place I want to be,
the only place to find my destiny.
#21/
There comes a time to leave the city soon.
There comes a time when breath is hard to find
in citied steel and rock, a time the moon
woos like a wolf as it climbs and winds
above the common buildings on the ground.
The habits of the city can distract
from proper sight and hearing proper sound,
from finding the best way that we should act.
What wilderness is left is left for us.
It takes some courage to take the first step,
but if we love, and if we build on trust,
hand-in-hand we can the other help
to find the way to see a better moon.
There comes a time to leave the city soon.
#22/
If you and I could learn a way to grow
in mutual trust; if we could learn to lean
like arches each to each; if we could know
exactly what the other feels and means;
if we could let our masks slip just a bit,
revealing what none other ever sees;
if we could roll in laughter at our wit,
observing all around us selfish "me's";
if we could give and take the best we can,
the best we have to offer of our lives;
if you can be a Woman, I a Man,
and closer friends than most husbands and wives:
then, darling, growth will be our song -
and fine discovery all our seasons long.
#23/
The more I love myself, the more my love
for you will grow. The more our souls touch,
the more secure our love will be. So much
depends on time and trust.
Far above
our awkward trek, the gods are smiling each
to each: they know the journey can be long.
But every tear creates a brand new song
of growth. The major lesson the gods teach
is we can grow and learn from past mistakes.
Darling, I swear I believe we'll do it right.
I believe we can, so that one distant night
we'll bond within the womb our love creates.
And when we bond, the future is our own
and we become one flesh, one heart, one bone.
#24/
The smallest things demand the biggest heart.
Passion has its place, and lustful screams
that penetrate the silence of the dark
can get two lovers through their lonely dreams.
And then the morning comes, and day is long;
the screams gone, silence fills the room
and what was passion doesn't seem as strong
as when the screams were offered against doom.
But flowers make their gesture toward the sun:
as day is when the bee will come to drink,
so day is when the finest deeds are done,
and day is when the mated become linked.
Screams of passion often have their say -
true lovers bond in silence through the day.
#25/
When love is in the heart, the body waits
its turn. The fire in the heart can burn
without a need to touch: when lovers learn
this silence, they learn much. When passion baits
too quick a touch, then lovers can create
the parameters of their very doom.
The body when ablaze has little room
for heart - despite the myths of how we mate.
Patience is a virtue when in love.
The best that we can be takes time to grow.
True lovers find a way to rise above
their own desire, and to hold it so.
But ah!, when body gets its turn to speak,
the bed is all ablaze for weeks and weeks . . .
#26/
It's easier to give than to receive.
The giver sets the pace, shows the way
for love to bloom - or not. To believe
in love is to give; receiving is to say,
"Yes, I trust in love as well." The fear
of this is loss of control, the scary risk
of giving up a power we hold dear,
no longer to decide the way we're kissed.
Darling, it took me long to let your love
wash over me like ointment from the gods.
It's hard for me to take, easy to give:
I've had to be in charge of all the odds.
Now I learn both to give and receive;
now I learn to trust as well as believe.
#27/
I never loved before as I love now;
I never knew that love could be like this.
The passion of my youth suggested how
love burns like a flame: the biting kiss
of youth draws blood. Obsessions push the mind
over the edge of sanity itself
when love's consuming everything it finds.
We have a kinder regard for the Self.
The blood we draw moves through wiser veins
and flows into the heart. Together we
become a unity with more to gain
when not apart: we help the other Be.
Now I know how very much I've missed.
I never knew that love could be like this.