For My Next Valentine

I wanna send you flowers
Or maybe some Mardi Gras cake;
To become your next someone
I’d do whatever it’d take,

Get you look up from your phone,
And get you on over here;
But to take such heartfelt risks
Causes such a shrinking fear.

Daisies, ‘glories, roses, or tulips?
Purple and green and some gold?
Or sip some liquor, ‘tis quicker,
At least so’s I’ve been told.

But I want us pure, clear, and real
Not lost in a sick dawn’s early mist—
As a week later you’d do a whimsey start
Remembering how we had finally kissed.

Call me a florist of winged feet
For a bouquet to melt yonder rock!
Look up, look up from that anchor phone—
Eyes to eyes, can’t we find room to talk?

I wanna send you some flowers
(And someday plan wedding cake);
Can I become your next someone?
Look up, look up, for Heaven’s sake!

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Meet Me Once Again

Always wisht for a ‘grand affaire’
A love that rattled and shattered and grew
But only stolen glories and dried up hopes
And always the remains: ‘oh, how I’ll remember you’

Now guilty grey outcount the callow brown
And real age looms large in my mind
And alone with my picante Bordeaux
A joke portion remains of grace that one can find

Without pretense or malice aforethought
I plead you risk a newer pain
Join my foolish tilt at aged windmills
Meet me once more again

A riverbank, a hilltop, or bar
Your house, my house, running train
Restaurant, cemetery, or banquette
Meet me once more again

No promise of happily ever after
Just attentive present conversation
A chance to explore old embers
Or bury a youth’s spent intercession

A promise of ‘la grand affaire’
A love that filled and shattered and grew
Meet me once more again
Are all daisies really better when blue?