Outside the lines

You opened me like a
flimsy book
thumbed through pages of
boldly outlined
caricatures
mercurially finding

me, you

chose your weapon from
boxed arsenal

Sharp,new-to-the-point
unused you
busted-pieces me

You are 64-box of Crayolas
using all the colors
to colorfully
flesh out the person
that is me

pictures that became us

showing all the restraint
of a four-year-old
for boundaries
flair of Matisse-nuance
you have boldly
blithely refused to
color inside the lines

no paint-by-numbers
sloppy
is sensual
borderlines are
for the faint-of-heart

are is in the
eye of the beholder

– Mark L. Lucker
© 2020
http://lrd.to/sxh9jntSbd

#romance #romanticpoetry #poetryforValentinesDay

Midway? All the way. (Love is… #39)

Love is a day at the fair

flashing neon, loud music, exotic
sights, smells, sounds, enticements,
leering inducements of all sorts

adrenaline-pumping sensory overload

You know you shouldn’t overindulge
but you do and then you get sick
but what a ride, oh what a ride!

Faster! Faster! Faster!
Up! Down! All around! Spinning!
Dropping! Whirling! Faster! Faster!
Spinning around, wanting desperately
to get off but can’t until the ride stops

But by then it is way too late.

You are walking down the midway
woozy, but needing to eat
everything and nothing looks appetizing
you grab some cotton candy

Love is cotton candy in summer heat
sweet, sticky, satisfying – always a mess.

No matter how hard you try to keep your
fingers clean, it is always a mess
a great, big, sticky, gooey,
I’m-here-now-wouldn’t-miss-it
for-anything-ever-what-a-day mess.

– Mark L. Lucker
© 2018
http://lrd.to/sxh9jntSbd

Jarring (Love is… # 71)

Poets have often
likened love
to roses
summer days
pastoral scenes
other sundry
phenomena

saccharine sells

in toto
love is not
candy
roses
sweet imagery
clichés
violin soundtracks

I, having lived
love

see more esoteric
practicality
from, for the heart

love is tartar sauce.
It looks like hell
you have no idea what
is really in it
yet you always
always
seem to find
it tasty.

– Mark L. Lucker
© 2018
http://lrd.to/sxh9jntSbd

Morning coffee

Saturday

Early, but not too
I bring her
a cup of coffee
rich stuff,
the good stuff
our special
Saturday blend

She stirs gently,
like the brew
setting the mug
on her nightstand
pheromones blend with
aromatic Arabica

Saturday morning
alchemy dissolves into
Saturday afternoon

– Mark L. Lucker
© 2017
http://lrd.to/sxh9jntSbd

Love at the middle ages

Being your knight
in shining armor
often means more
work for you
pounding out dents
knocking off rust
slapping in Bondo
minimizing creaks
knowing just when,
where to squirt WD40

There is nobility in
your exasperation at
my Quixotic nature
acceptance of my
clunky, clanky chivalry;
romantic caprices
challenge your practicality
whimsically, we joust
word lances of affection,
never winner-take-all

M’lady
in your loving hands
I shine
tarnish becomes patina
you are the damsel
that rescued me, lo
those many years ago
abid, abyd, abyde,
my love

– Mark L. Lucker
© 2017
http://lrd.to/sxh9jntSbd

No fish story (for Amy)

I am not
carping here
from poet’s perch;
people often find my
reel, romantic tale fishy

Love is like shooting fish
in a barrel – this I have known
for long I have been one with the
proverbial oaken-casked flounderer

I am no fish out of water here
nor do I have any other fish to fry
there are, I know, other fish in the sea
but I have my catch; she caught me

you can take the bait on this:
looking for deeper meaning
in my metaphors is a
fishing expedition

loving her has
always been
easy: she
lured,
I bit

hook,
line,
sinker

– Mark L. Lucker
© 2016
http://lrd.to/sxh9jntSbd

Vestiges

As kids, we tied our fates
to various inanimate
yet participatory objects

spun bottles
Ouija boards
dandelions

professed proof of true loves
brought cryptic messages
all interpreted with certainty

until the imagined magic
wore off leaving us with our
first taste of skepticism

but the bottle could be
redeemed for the deposit,
the eye to the beyond a
table for your sister’s Barbie,
wilted weed went to seed

youth can leave you jaded
if you play the games
forgetting it is all in fun

– Mark L. Lucker
© 2016
http://lrd.to/sxh9jntSbd

---

‘Vestiges’ is just a sample.

From my book ‘Lost, found, holding on’ Available in paperback or Kindle http://lrd.to/p6rxzwIMnD

 

Distance

The expanse is self-inflicted
a self-exiled expatriate;
I am here, not there

answered a calling, have since done my
best at least pretty well considering
restraints with which I had to work

sometimes I feel
my work here done
my time here over
needed elsewhere,
so I try to believe

but the work here is far from finished
though I would prefer it be for me

there are times I think someone else
needs to take their turn at this thing
as I have been here, done that

God has yet to agree.

Life off the playground is not about
taking turns everybody does not get into
the game (their choice) so I keep working
at all of it, trying hard, doing what I can,
attempting to practice the patience I
once employed abundantly in tougher
times and situations

Awaiting God’s answers
to questions I am not sure
I know how to even ask
is my symbol to bear

In seeking clarity to a calling maybe I
need to be more specific in expressing
my tepidly unique, evolving, reservations

– Mark Lucker

Pictures

We
were a long
time ago

years?
decades?
lifetimes?
carbon dating?

time is filled in
a long forgotten
coloring book
half the pictures
never finished
bold, black-line
outlines dated,
quaint

stumbled across
by accident
you flip through
remembering
all the scenes
beach, park,
ball, puppy

love ?

first few pages
carefully colored
giving way to
partially filled
marker-mosaics
lacking nuance
or hue
unrealistically
bold

and only now do
you understand the
illogic in staying
within the lines

as you toss the
book in the trash

– Mark Lucker

From Here to Less Certainty

A day at the beach
we have been here before;

I am trying to be
Burt Lancaster
as you hesitate to play
Deborah Kerr with
self-conscious protestations
I have heard many times

But today the kids are
not with us, the friends who
we accompany sit engrossed
in their sun-worshipping,
paperbacks, inflatable-floating

oblivious to us and not
burning with our middle-aged
or any other sort of passion

my long smoldering fantasy
plays a recurring loop in
my mind’s eye always,
not oddly, in pristine
black-and-white

admittedly I have never had
Burt’s shoulders, jaw line,
hair, stature
I have tried vainly to
master his presence,
make it my own, yet
sadly cannot stand
and drip water on you
with marquee panache

you lay on your towel
my attempts to entice you
to join me once, just one
time, in a sandy embrace
while the gentle surf
plops meekly upon the shore
are warily deflected

It then occurs to me your
reticence might be overcome
by bigger, bolder surf
or more unique idea

but I am what I am

as I sit on the warm sand
I wonder if crashing waves
really would set your heart
pounding or if I should
just let the tide go out

– Mark Lucker