Love Poems for Valentine's
(Poems to Make Her Fall in Love)
Ernesto (Tito) Tinajero
Published by Ernesto Tinajero at Smashwords
Copyright 2010 Ernesto Tinajero
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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To my wife, Dr. Lace Williams-Tinajero more than my muse, she is my friend, my partner and proof about the goodness of life.
Introduction: The Power of Love Poems and How to Use This Book
She said that I must be responsible for hundreds of new babies. I answered her, my fellow waiter, with the reality was that it not me, but those love poems. These love poems they read to each other reminded the couples about the wonder of love. My coworker at the restaurant smiled when I said this; she made far more in tips on Valentine’s Day since she started using my love poems for her tables. Food and love are connected and love poems awaken the senses. Under the spell of love poems, the Valentines dinner of lightly sauté crab cakes taste better. The guests were happier.
Love poems have power.
See, when I attended graduate school, I waited tables at a fine dinning restaurant. Every year all the other servers hated working Valentine’s Day. The pressure was so great on couples to make the day special. It made people tough to please and the tips that day were terrible for most servers. With such high expectations, couples were disappointed, and became grumpy with each other and with the servers. Most servers had a rotten night, most not all, as I had a good night both in terms of work and tips. Under a steady diet of Pablo Neruda, Elizabeth Barret-Browning, and the Song of Songs, I have come to believe in love poems. I made money and my couples had a great night. I know that this experience is not unique. Poems have the power to charm us past frustration and anger.
Once Pablo Neruda, the great love poet of Chile, almost got into a fight in a tavern. He tells the story of when he, self admittedly old, short and overweight, confronted a younger stronger man that wants to show Neruda the business end of wall ... head first. Neruda was facing certain pain, when one of his friends called out Pablo Neruda's name in the midst of the confrontation. The young man bent on hurting Neruda stopped, and asked Pablo if he was the same Pablo Neruda who wrote those famous love poems. Pablo said yes, and the young man broken down and cried. He cried because he said Neruda's poems made his wife love him. He apologized and bought Neruda's group a round of drinks. Love ruled once again.
Love poems help.
When couples read love poems to each other, they fell in love again. Love poems, well written, have that effect. Valentines day is usually full of clichés, and the couples feel more like they are playing at the game of love rather than living a great romance. Great love poems cut through our core and make us authentic again. That’s the secret of great love poems. Love poems are little bits of memory and story that remind and shape us back into love. Like a good exercise program, most of us need a good program to keep us get in good love shape. Even if we are in a great relationship, we need to workout and keep it in shape. Love keeps us in health, and love poems help us experience love.
Love poems worked their magic.
Why do love poems work? Let us go back to when I brought in love poems for Valentines day. I would present them at the beginning of the night to the would-be grumpy couple. I would instruct the man to read the poem to his girlfriend, date, or wife. Soon, they would be making eyes at each other. The quality of food, the wine and the powerful words would mix and the results were hand in hand exits, which were great tips for me, and a pleasant night for them. They may well have been babies conceived after such a night. As the biblical book The Song of Songs implies, new life comes from love.
My fellow servers quickly noticed and asked for their own packets of love poems to present to their tables. Some of the following poems are the same poems I used; these poems have a great track record for tracing love back to the origin. I challenge you to read them out to your lover. I know it will wake up memories in you and your partner.
These love poems can work for you.
So, how do you use love poems? The following poems were written about a particular woman as many of the great love poems are. They are the reason my wife married me. Yes, I am in one of those relationships where everyone asks what a great knockout like her is doing with a shlub like me. I won her heart through crafting my feelings for her into art. I wrote then honestly and authentically. The moments I capture are real, from cooking dinners together to hiking to going out an exploring together. The power of the poems comes not from pretending but by identifying with another’s love.
Love poems work because they are honest.
While you maybe tempted to pull a Cyrano De Bergerac and try to pass off the poems as your own, that is not necessary. Humans are born with mirror neurons that allows us to experience by see through others’ eyes. One of reasons great art helps us transcend ourselves, reading love poems, even of another relationship, pulls in our own love story. Just by reading them to you significant other makes the love poems work. They work best with your own honesty and your love. It is good to remember the play about Cyrano De Bergerac. The tragedy of the play is that Cyrano did not trust his own words; he did not trust his own love. Roxane falls in love with the man who wrote the words, but only finds out it was Cyrano as he is dying. But we in the audience understand that love, and just experiencing the play makes us open to love.
Try the love poems.
The only way to see the true is to try it for yourselves. Read the poems out loud. Notice your own feels, thought and memories. Notice your partner's reaction. Read them slowly, with a slight pause after each line. You will see that they do summon the erotic love within you. By the erotic love, I mean the classic meaning of the word, love fully awaken to the senses that transforms us and gives us a glimpse into the ultimate reality. In love, we see the world in truth. Love gives the purpose of life. Erotic Love is only one the simple facets of the larger love that gives life.
Love poems give life.
Reading these poems, for me, is a spiritual act. The spiritual is always involved with awaking, an intensifying of life. Food taste better after someone points out the
Ernesto Tinajero Sept. 1, 2010
~~~~
The Elegant Ambience of Delicacy
I have contemplated the orchestration
of the gestures your expressions over plates
of seared ahi tuna glazed with soy ginger,
over tall veggie towers drenched in plum sauce (you
licking the edge of your lips) …over steeples
of romaine lettuce coated with Caesar dressing.
I have spied your hand armed with a fork moving
on my chicken sautéed in sweet wine and wild
mushrooms …on macadamia nut filled pan-
cakes …on slowly roasted Greek beef. I have
meditated on your exactness over gallons
of green tea …over your broiled swordfish …over
brazened leg of lamb. Saving room for dessert
and the delicious nutrition of your presence.
~~~~
The Taste of Ancient Fruit
Yes, I appreciate that love is a spoiled lie.
For our postmodern world, irony must rule.
We, sharper than love, are way, way too cool
for that romantic dream. We ought say goodbye.
Yet, surveying the geography of your hips,
the slight rise and fall of your oasis landscape,
I am ignited by the charm of polished palm dates.
Like the Song of Songs, I sing of pomegranate lips.
Your soul moves me to inhale your breath.
The kindness you show to our infant son,
The wonder of your love's truth makes us young.
Oh, oh, how our shared life transcends death.
Love, love, how I bellow through the dark night?
Time expands moments like a child's flying kite.
~~~~
Then She Cooks Dinner
I taste her floral broccoli steamed with butter,
sprinkled with red chili pepper flakes,
and mixed with Spanish sherry vinegar. It makes
your subtle side dish, tangy. This hotter
meal preludes her lasting dessert of tart
berries tinged with the milk chocolate
top with heavy cream. The velvety taste rockets
from her delicate rich hands that cart
her tenderness to this meal of our passions.
My skin, created by food long ago consumed,
Holds a unbreakable eager fork, a presumed
Utensil of blending. Shared food fashions
Us into red blood, flesh, and living cells.
Let us eat after answering the dinner bells.
~~~~
The Splendor of Living Blood
Let us make a bargain. Let us make a covenant
to stand before our love, covering up our death
with his new life. Together. Let me hear your mind
grinding out more of love’s accord. Let us shake
hands, and let love quake us out of our complicacy
and into eating salty bread. Let us get drunk
on the love of a wine that bursting open our old
skins. Shower us. Stain us. Stamp us in love.
Let this form our conversations and binds us.
Death will not see us, and we can hold each
other with the words fleshed out. We can then
live in peace. Our history and our future extending
out into our greeting. Embracing, and caressing
the shoulders of our love, let us enter this bargain.
~~~~
In the Playground Where Children Play: Washing Plates
In the mundane, I see your grace moving—caressing
dry a plate. In your hands, a slow cleansing happens.
We laugh, aware of connection to the deepness
of life. Being with you is being with the fun
of a long ago childhood. New in freedom,
original in the running of the warm water—pristine
in the midst of soap—innovative in our pasta meal
—we share and we are baptizing porcelain. You
and I are washing dirty dishes again, and
for the first time. I am being alive inside of your
giggle. I am together with the sound of water
—the sound of your elegant voice. Speaking
to the children we have been and still are, the tender-
ness together converts this chore into our blessing .
~~~~
The Drama of Small Waves:
on the beach with my love
In a deep search of who you are, I find
the ocean. The salt flavor of our life sings
your voice, and I kiss you. I will find sand
for weeks to come. Calling me not to forget
this moment—Grace—moving within our
full bellies is a shared leg of lamb. Our feet
massage the shoreline. We start to notice
the children around us, playing. They are
strangers that we know and hear through
our love, strengthening our growing bond. Yet
we must leave. You drive me to work. I contemplate
about our sea time together on this coastline,
failing to remember it all. What I have now
is the lingering tang of your sea-flavored lips.
~~~~
The Politics of Joyful Attention
Love, if I fear, do not stop laughing.
Let your mouth form a guitar singing
through the darkness. Let the ringing
of the joy flash a blinding lightening
strike into my thick air. If I am absent,
then live in a tree. Make the roots live
with novel water—mushrooms repent
where a tree trunk meets the earth. Forgive
the boy who screams for an outrageous
release from his story. My seedling fear
weeps to be rocked. Your deep chartreuse
voice sustains the tree’s foliage. I hear
your tone. The soft texture of your elation
consoles my terror. Your voice, my liberation!
~~~~
Working The Information Booth On The Day We Met
Your blue fleece vest, a white shirt, blue jeans, hair
the color of agile lips, a smile, and a question for me….
I answer… a beginning to our original dance in degrees.
Later, I will lead you to your orientation room, where
you will chart the course for your year’s studies. Next, the meals
and desserts to meet the other starting students. School
events to introduce the year’s leaning follow. Missionaries
from around the world: Africa, Korea, Germany all gather with zeal…
I notice you as I lead our small group in dialog…possibility,
uncertainty. Love, I feared, as I set the tables for night’s the banquet.
I worked welcome week, and look for you in all the activities.
The Friday Night Dance, and you are surround by many success
seeking boys. I wait for my chance. The sea of testosterone parts,
I ask. You respond. I appraise your silhouette in motion—we flow.
~~~~
Stroking My Love’s hands, The Scholar
I give you a pen, love, modern in design,
soft to your hands. You stand as a tremor
to writing and reading. I honor your skills.
Coming down from the mountains
of your home, you give yourself to books,
to the Book of the Living. Meditating on love
of the Divine and humans, you pour through
ancient words speaking to what we need to hear.
I remember a leash of concrete winding
up a hill toward a suspension bridge.
It made a cross out of the skyline. I
would return to my home on this road
dividing great mountain ranges. Being with you
creates a timelessness and you stay on our page.
~~~~
The Return of Our Future
In our beginning there was a September light
in your hair. Your sea-blue clothes make
the earth green again. Life becomes animated once
more. I notice even in Los Angeles how many animals,
pets, dogs, cats move around me. I will play
carefully with your eyes. I don’t want to fall
into the games that kill love off. You are here
in the first week of our meetings. A place in words
makes us aware of each other in freedom. Dancing
on Friday night gives us the awe of the possibility
of one in two. The music unclutters and opens us up
to the creation coming from our future. Returning
to knowing the simple in the complex calls us; we see
the divine again, delighting in our new love’s key.
~~~~
Passions and Impressions after Few Months
Drinking up your words, I find naked
Meaning in our last eight month, in your still voice.
I praise love for your opening onto my life.
I, again, taste our first kiss—holding—mingling
in the night air. Filled with my emptiness,
We contemplate, and listen for a word.
You lay your hand on my shoulder—less
quiet, your hand pats the living tissue. Herding
my fears to a place where hand sweep clears
the soil. Love, the divine comes into us and we
part the soil to place our seed. Insight
as to how to clear our past’s dirt, makes us sing.
How to honor our beginnings? A mystery
need not need a solution, it simply grows.
~~~~
The Dynamic of Space
It is sometimes painful to be with you. Love,
I miss so much. If I try to read the dance
movements of your face, I miss the steps
of gestures of your hands. And If I focus
on your words, how can I see the way you hold
your body? There is too much of you. Love,
you are an unexplored land, calling me.
It hurts. Being so aware of my own
unawareness. How can I remember
the shy cover your hands give to your face
in such quick staccato? My imagination
is too small to hold all of the shapes inside
of my spinning mind. And yet, I am still
here proclaiming the suffering luscious.
~~~~
The Shade of Seasons
You are winter. A snow-glazed mountain
Is your strength, in your refusal to be moved
from the truth, traveling through the blizzard
of the past knowing what is promised.
You are summer. A playful day on a beach:
balls, children with the wonder of how large
the ocean is, and a breeze in those warm moments
of the rising tides. Swimming into new waters.
You are autumn. Leaves becoming Multi-colored,
The harvest grains, life giving fruit to store for our
sustaining. Planning and caring for these gifts
given, your breath is highlighted in the cooling air.
You are the spring. New water flowing, bringing
rebirth. Beyond a cycle and you rush with your singing.
~~~~
Our First Road Trip
The key turns on our imminent adventures.
The liquid fuel unites with air and rushes toward
The pistons. The launching bellows, a muscular Ford.
Your hands grips the steering wheel, which lures
My spirit. The spark, a controlled combustion,
Then we drive past the city of our meeting.
Following the ocean line, we see seawater beating
The drawn out cliffs, an ancient compulsion.
The tires roll on man made roads. Longing to view
You dip into the pacific, as the surf spoofs around
Us, I spin my words with yours. Dialog bounds
The moment of anticipation. Sun colors the sky blue.
Love, living instances, knows the future with assurance.
We travel the trip with endurance and divine insurance.
~~~~
The Mambo Queen
Hips dance with a deep understanding. She
bids with her merengue's progression. Salsa hot,
and she teaches the grace of shaking. How to
understand her round mango dignity? How
she moves with such fructose. Some jerk her around,
as if she was a paper doll. And she is not over-
come. Others, smooth as polished apples find
her matching them. The graceful pair patterns
the merging eternity. She rumbles the rumba
of slaves refusing to be chained. Transcending,
and echoing the truth, she keeps time. Her feet
voice freedom, her lengthening legs promise life.
Can this be true? Can we find the divine in union?
Lovers eat the motion of beats, humming the melody.
~~~~
On Finding Out That You Could Have Die as a Baby
Love, Love, Love,
I could have lost
you before I
knew you. What sorrow would I feel
without knowing the reason. It would have been
a chewing
pain in my gut, and I, with an unknown
reason, would suffered without love.
God,
I am astonished. You
moved into maturity and our love and you are a walking
miracle. Think of huckleberries begging to be eaten
by you but without
you, your niece without you,
and my life
without you. Our son never to born.
I can’t imagine a world without
lighthouse trips to the top,
without views of the ocean’s vista and promise.
without pomegranates—round and ripe,
without you lips. I would miss your
taste, and I wouldn’t even know what I
would be missing. What a nightmare.
What a tragedy.
What a spiral staircase
Life is.
The banister curves
up and down,
a twisting latter toward
dreams,
toward
a new heights,
inviting us to explore.
~~~~
Where Life Thrives and Is Confirmed
-To my one and only Love
You sing children’s songs as we stand at the edge
of the ocean. Your voice is born deep in the foliage
of the little girl you were and are. Blooming
in your laugh, I am bursting like a purple berry
picked from the Rockies, your mountains. Hold onto
such fruits without grapping them into possession,
without causing them to wither. Preordained, love,
by the careful placing of your hands, I listen to you
as I clean dishes, rearrange tables, plant the space
of your new home. Deep in the new carpet, you
create a place to be: Singing—laughing—planning
—dancing—I see a woman’s growing peace.
There is a sweetness to a strong woman’s voice, chanting
arias of uncontained textures—a cleansing wonder.
~~~~
Being Captivated
It is not the first fight that awaits us
Which I fear. Settling in with you, I have found
a playmate, a friend, a companion. A wo-
man discovering in yourself the way of being
Grace. I love you for this—Our Genesis
to create—You, woman, are a mystery of many
stories, an endless point of engagement.
I begin to see an unspoiled world in the shade
of your aqua eyes. You sees me in my original light,
I am alive to the independence in the freedom.
Your spirit moves me to focus on the freshness
of our new world. I can say yes! To you,
I owe an endless awakening to clarity. I fear be-
coming boredom and the loss of your pristine eyes.
~~~~
Destinations and Diversions:
Phoning from a great distance
The play of light and electrons craft your voice
from movements of your neck a thousand miles
away. I sit alone, separated by mounds and plies
of wires—the telephone. Your tenor and wit toys
with instances and places. Hours melt and the receiver
becomes hot from being to close to my head.
I imagine how you positioned your body; I, a surveyor,
charts the wondrous recollections of all you say.
Love completes our distances and names our closeness.
Breath and blood needs daily amusement. Our space
implies time and we forge a plan to escape and race
into a closer date to reunite. Our listening, a bonus,
moves into sharing about bad movies nights with friends.
Our tone tremble at the distance, but our love never bends.
~~~~
The Moment Before
Hunting for the signs I know well, I listen.
You inhale, ferociously, and the farmer in me
who knows how to read the coming clouds
awakens. I prepare for the life-restoring
rain which is arriving with your insights. It is
your cue, a deep chest breath, and I know
that you have thought through to our sensuality.
I cannot explain how the water nourishes
the planted seed, only that it happens.
I have the proof of many past irrigations,
times of monsoons before the growing
season—times of blooming. Into you,
I hear the voice calling, “Are the seeds ready?
Have you plowed through the earth—the weeds?”
~~~~
Learning a New Language
In the gentle cuddle of holding your hand, I find
your feistiness—in a thumb-war. You win the right
side—pressing my thumb down in victory.
I win the left: declaring a balance. And then
I feel the light touch of your fingertips pulling