5 Beautiful Poems

by Bob McAfee

Bedtime Story – a Duplex

Come lie down beside me, love me a while. I’m tired and I’m lonely and ready for bed.

Will you stay? Will you play? If you just make me smile, I will tell you a story,

sell you a story, a strange allegory of lust and illusion, confusion and dread,

a story of sinning and at the beginning I’m young and I’m eager,

too young and too eager, and anxious to please. So I follow my friends, as the future impends.

A long night ensues with the drugs we abuse. First I’m lost then I’m found,

first I’m tossed then I’m bound, then I’m down on my knees. As the journey progresses,

the strains and the stresses exact a harsh toll. I’m bitter and cold. I soon lose my pride,

any semblance of pride, feeling hopeless inside, till the day I discover a lover’s caress

saves my soul, now I’m whole and the story is told. She lies down beside me,

sliding closer beside me, her eyes flashing a warning as her fingertip traces the line

of my beard. She says “Listen, my friend, it’s not close to the end. I’ve a hell of a story,

one hell of a story, to tell in the morning and it’s sexy and lengthy and wondrous and weird.

Come lie down beside me, love me a while. I’m tired and I’m lonely and ready for bed.”

***

Homecoming

The door is always open

in the cottage in the far glen.

I can hear my mother call out

to my father in the garden.

My children gather round him

like the weeds around the flowers.

His stories entertain them

while the minutes turn to hours.

Upstairs my lover’s waiting

with my hot bath and my razor.

Her touch can melt the decades

and her kiss burns like a laser.

In the oven dinner’s roasting

while a pie cools on the window.

The summer breeze is blowing

but I hardly hear the wind blow.

The grass is green forever

and the moor is filled with heather.

You are here beside me

wearing calico and leather.

Nothing lasts a lifetime

like the roses in the garden,

but the door is always open

in the cottage in the far glen.

***

Ice Cream on the Lawn

I can’t recall the geometry of your face,

the one you wore when you were twenty-one

but there was something crazy about your smile

freezing crisply in the celestial dawn

that reminded me of ice cream on the lawn.

We were standing in the dueling place.

I raised my dirk, you aimed your Gatling gun

slowly overwhelming me with guile,

sexual battle lines so cleverly drawn.

I was blinded eating ice cream on the lawn.

You came off best in every quotidian race.

I cared not whether each was lost or won

for fifty years of battling, all the while

pausing to suppress the occasional yawn,

single-minded, ice cream on the lawn.

***

Beautiful Elizabeth

If not for the sun, all my days would be dark.

If not for the moon, the night sky would go dry.

If not for your face, all my smiles would be frowns,

my ups would be downs and my story would die.

If not for your love, the sun would be home

with his head in his hands and his eyes on the ground.

If not for your kiss, the moon would go hide,

child forbidden to ride on a merry-go-round.

The sun lights your lips with the blush of a rose,

brushes your hair with his fingers of fire.

The moon calms the fears at the edge of your tears

as he sings you to sleep with his lunatic choir.

Every morning the sun awakens when I do,

looks in at you sleeping and he smiles once again.

Every evening the moon gazes down at your pillow,

weeps with the willow then winks to all men.

***

I Love You More

I only love you more in the odd years,

the years the snow comes early and the seasons sing,

the years that melt in spring’s first rain,

the sweltering years with languid summers

and purple afternoons in lingering autumn haze.

Or is it that I only love you more in the even years,

wrapped around a memory like a candy-wrapper dream,

hiding in the textures of a life lived two-in-one,

swinging down a dusty country lane,

barefoot in the early morning sunshine of my mind.

I want to be with you in the years I love you more,

only in those years and never in the times between,

to hold your hand and look into the eyes that love just me,

to kiss the lips that want me and only me,

but only in the years I love you more.