Love Poems

              Pellucid Love of Youth

Hungry hands and heart
    mountains of memories.
She runs forever
    across my jaded mind.

Her essence sweetens my soul,
    unforgettable, incurable.
This fool once held her heart.
    Since then, no other has sated.

Oh pellucid love of youth!
    Nectarous reminiscence!
Amaroidal regret!
    Perdurable regard!

Padded vacancies, ever vacuous.
    Reluctantly panning for happiness
through lackluster, golden crumbs of fools.
    Dunderhead and dreamer drives on

I pray she's happy and content,
    that I mourn our love alone...
and yet anchored to hopes
    love of a lifetime lives on.

© Michael J. Nappi 

                    Only To Be Distant

I beg your indulgence while I expose myself.
Opening up slowly, deliberately
I bare parts of my soul for your consideration.
You’ve seen the protuberant facade,
rigid and hardened, a clown and his pride.
I know you, we’re strangers; so much alike.

So close we remain distant, what keeps us apart?
That day years ago, I saw you
compliantly going to your cross.
Naked, unappreciated, hurt and abused.
Your pains were his pleasure.
Your well being ignored.

Restraining myself you were not mine to save.
The one then that was; so wrong for me.
Each within our own dead end one way affairs.
Were we in love or insane?
Honoring previous commitments
distance was protocol (that’s where it began).

Shackled with morals, negated by values.
Choosing honor over love.
At the time it seemed wrong to love you.
Looking back I was wrong anyway
and I still am today.
But it was never wrong to love you
Only to be distant

©  Michael J. Nappi

Love Me From A Distance

 Looking back at our love
                    it seems better
                    from a distance.

       This playground of affection
                   a teeter totter
                   of love and hate.

                               Neither having better things to do.

       By my hand you suffered
                  outside extended arms,
                  keeping you at bay...
                           untimely
                                and unkind.

                                Expired days, like passion.

       Once inside my wall of arms,
                 the sweetness
                            of your kiss:

                numbing warmth
                           of your betrayal
 
                                    destroyed me
                                           in perpetuity.

                             My eyes forever turned from love.

       Conversations of convenience:
               feeling forced
               and fleeting
 
                              You said "I love you"
                              speaking to yourself

© Michael J. Nappi   

Truth Over Love

Welcomed in delight
    her tongue parts my lips…
          passion glows!
              Hands and mind wander

Haunting echoes stab my ears.
    Her selfish words:
        Reverberate rancid inequities…
            shattering trust.

Images of deceit,
    obscured by beauty,
        self shamed,
            as hunger grows.

My thoughts,
    her thoughtlessness.
        Whiskey fails to chase
            the bitterness of her kiss.

Eyes feasts on elegance.
    Ears weep their knowing.
        Cursed false beliefs of love.
              Learned loathsome truths:

Solitude preferred to servitude
    Being neither jailed or jailer,
        freedom forever found
            in company of self.

© Michael J. Nappi  

Far From Love

   Separately
              daydream together
                    desire, delight, destiny
                              duty

                      Living between heartbeats
                            divided not by time
                                  nor distance

      His story, her story
              Grown together
                    with offerings
                            of hearts in hand

                    Welcome gates of dawn
                            and future promise
                                  Today becomes the fruit
                                          of tomorrows yesteryear

              All that we are
          exposed, vulnerable...
          shielded by this trust
                Love is faith

©  Michael J. Nappi

Ardent Contrition

A shadow of herself      
stripped and fading
           naked and vulnerable
 
Lost in the bed of her construction
   Simple choices

         hobbled by regrets              
                              disengaged and disappointed
                     a conspiracy of time

  Looking back
                            out her window  
       
  Pensive through pendulous past
            to the springboard of youth

 Rules once broken fearlessly
         each tested against her psyche
for fun and forgiving
 
Now frowning at her forborne future self
       Passions extinguished like flames
                dowsed in torrents of tears
                  Swimming with the currents of life

        Rage toward palpable and certain end
              Lost love escapes four chambers of regret  

Venerable feelings
of shared majesty and magic
          inestimable precious moments; unfinished
                  released, relived, rejuvenated

                        Arrival at the end of hope
        true love reunited
               joined in her last breath
They leave this world, sharing a smile

©  Michael J. Nappi