Romeo: Is love a tender thing? it is too rough,
Too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like thorn.
from Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
Love is rage and red,
the amber eyes of a screech owl
patient —
waiting for mice that never comes.
Love is midnight venom
wrapped in cotton
silk bowed words and growls at dawn;
love is sage,
you are love and love is you.
Sometimes
love wears plimsolls and a cotton dress
dances with the waves
and sleeps with sand on sun warm skin,
at other times love is ice
relentless hail or
the subtle way the morning fog
may glaze my face. Still
love is rage and red.
Red Nude Sitting Up by Marc Chagall
I’m hosting dVerse MTB tomorrow and the theme is metaphors. I want you to avoid similes and cliches. Make them strong and unique (be careful with moons and roses). Join us when we open at 3 PM EST.
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September 13, 2017
Mountains of marvellous metaphors, Björn!
I can’t remember meeting her. In your fiery description might be the reason why.
This is a very good and interesting poem. Well done.
I especially like these:
“the amber eyes of a screech owl
patient”
“Love is midnight venom
wrapped in cotton
silk bowed words and growls at dawn;
love is sage”
“the subtle way the morning fog
may glaze my face”
Nice turn at the end – the quiet cold of the winter fog – undone by the refrain – love is rage and red.
Holy! wow!!!
My favorite lines:
“Love is midnight venom
wrapped in cotton
silk bowed words and growls at dawn;”
Bjorn, where did all this come from? Not only is this incredible poem a metaphor, but its a metaphor of surrealism at its best and the concept of love is well expressed within the context of your magnificent poem. 🙂
I do not really know where it comes from… but I went back and forth to span the spectrum of what love might be.
You have touched upon so much and your work is always an influence to me.
As long as Love is; and it always is, whether we like it or not!
Oh you do this so well, my friend. “Love Is” That is a phrase we’ve used in our family for many many years….no words before, none after. Now I know that words that come after! Beautifully done! 🙂 And thanks for hosting with this wonderful prompt!
Love is all those things Bjorn. Such a wonderful collection of metaphor. I’m out teaching this evening so will be late to the bar but have linked up early. Have an evening that is a night at the fairground.
Love is–could be a novella, rife with metaphor, or a primer, or an encyclopedia–and yet only in your words do we find your wonderfully creative and off-center perspective; and right on with that; nothing more boring then that which is truly linear or perfectly centered. You hooked me with /silk bowed words and growls at dawn/.
Marvelous the owl and the mice!
You’ve metaphored wonderfully in this poem Bjorn. My favourites have to be:
‘Love is midnight venom
wrapped in cotton
silk bowed words and growls at dawn’;
‘Sometimes
love wears plimsolls and a cotton dress
dances with the waves’;
and
‘the subtle way the morning fog
may glaze my face’.
Very lovely, – my favourite bit is “Sometimes
love wears plimsolls and a cotton dress
dances with the waves
and sleeps with sand on sun warm skin” I think you have encapsulated many many types of love.
Starting and ending with “rage and red” leaves room in the middle for many other metaphors for love.
Love is so multifaceted and your poem shows this well. Wonderful and horrible, comforting and uncomfortable many oxymorons in a sense – opposites.
“Love is… / the amber eyes of a screech owl / patient — / waiting for mice that never comes.” You, no doubt will have several “amens” for this thought-stream. Nice working of a poem, Bjorn!
Breathtaking, really.
“Love is midnight venom
wrapped in cotton
silk bowed words and growls at dawn” — my favorite.
You’ve set the bar ‘way high, sir! This poem is filled with wonderful metaphors.
I’m into this poem. I just used it to give my daughter a poetry lesson. I wonder about this love that is “growls at dawn” that one could be good or bad.
Wow, you said it so new!
“the subtle way the morning fog may glaze my face”..I love this line. So many excellent metaphors in this poem – Now if I had read this before I posted mine, I might have done better!
love is a fierce emotion.
‘love wears plimsolls and a cotton dress
dances with the waves
and sleeps with sand on sun warm skin,’ – i really admire this part, the warm bliss of being love.
So many qualities of love, but here ‘rage and red’ are the defining ones, prefacing and concluding love. Like the bloody under-belly of that Corinthians verse, “Love is patient, love is kind…”
Wow….marvelous…!
An awesome bit of writing that bursts with captivating, layered metaphors.
love the movements in the third stanza. It is so fluid and so sensuous.
Really enjoyed the punchiness of the middle stanza.
This is so raw and real. Loved it!
Lovely poem!
Intense. Sometimes I think love and hate are the same thing.
Love is like the mist on my face. wonderful.