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

Breezes

summer comes to a close
autumnal breezes waft
rustling memories of those
days when the close of summer
had more definitive endings

sun-drenched days of youthful
frolic, innocent play, done

swimming, playing with frogs in
holes dug on sandy beaches at
grandparent’s homes; ‘the lake’
summer Xanadus of childhood
one year, scenic backdrops for
advancing adolescence the next

the summer dented pails,
bent shovels lay unused in
boathouse corner; replaced with
initials inside a heart, drawn
artfully at dusk in beach sand with
carefully chosen stick, just to be
erased by evening’s gentle waves

Previous summers we traveled
in packs along endless lakeshore
some ‘ooing’ over discovered shells
all ‘eewing!’ over dead, bloated fish
skipping rocks to show machismo

But our duo walks became more
intimate strolls through the woods
privacy trumping pinecone collection,
coy separation from the collective
group not as subtle as we hoped

Each summer indelible as the
next; parts of many years blending
seamlessly together, a montage of
youthful Julys, childhood vacations

But the starkness of one summer
that is viewed not with the gauziness
of looking back fondly, but with clarity
of time, place, purpose…firsts.

One brilliant, Kodacolor snapshot
that never made it into any scrapbook
yet still remains the clearest picture

especially when summer ends
and the breezes of fall swirl

– 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

One metmorphisize fits all

Happily-ever-after
mythology
prefaces every sequel
continuing
character-driven sagas
story arc only
tacking an index onto
volume one,
three, sixteen in a set

having read this scene
repeatedly
life movies
annotated script
writing, rewriting books
they were based on

playing
déjà vu-all-over-again
never more than
countless times
here-we-go-again
monotony of
changing times
changing directors

same cast of characters
different roles
replaced actors
haven’t-I-
seen-this-show-before?

Exit, stage right
enter stage left
either or,
vice versa
prefacing intermission
act one ends…

next!

time to regroup, recast
strike the set

endings are simply
ellipsis
masquerading
as comfort
to the ill-at-ease

– Mark L. Lucker
© 2016

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

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‘Vestiges’ is just a sample.

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

 

Pic-ah-nic bas-ket! (Love is… #161)

Love is
fried chicken

you’re never
certain –

follow the rules
of etiquette…

…or just dive in,
use your fingers

savory
satisfying
finger-lickin’
chew-on-bone

yummy, messy
heart-healthy
artery clogging
oh-so-tasty

Love is
fried chicken

but when all is
said and done
just what do
you do with the
gnawed on
bones?

– Mark Lucker

Advancement

I eschew sex.

Firmly entrenched
now in middle age
I have found the act
wanting, boring

the physicality dull,
unimaginative
old hat

Sex
has lost its interest
in me

shunning sex,
I have discovered
making love

It is the side effect of
experience
the residue of having
love, lost, found

I am the artist
who has traded Play-Doh
for the potter’s wheel

– 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