Hoodie-Footies and hot chocolate? Perhaps on a desultory October evening when the leaves begin to fall. How about a candlelit dinner at (insert favorite splurgey restaurant) to commemorate who-knows-what? Oh God, don't you do that already? Well then, what about a (seashore, lakefront, storefront -- think Breakfast at Tiffany's) walk, followed by s'mores or a clambake, a bottle of Chateau Lafite or a can of Coke Zero? Kind of pedestrian, kind of anytime.
No, no, no, this is Valentine's Day, the holy day, of, in the immortal words of Kermit the Frog, lovers, dreamers and, um, me (and presumably, hopefully, for you as well). Mindful of Paul Valery's painfully-true contention that "Love is being stupid together," how about ten poems and ten paintings that celebrate the art of being stupid together? Come on, just this once.
Andrew Z. Cohen: 'I Just Called to Say I Love You': Reflections on the Multiple Meanings of Love
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I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.
I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.
I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,
and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.
-- Pablo Neruda
and on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Essential-Neruda-Selected-Poems/144992598856123
paz, pan, flores y amor,
mark
If questioning could make us wise
no eyes would ever gaze in eyes;
if all our tale were told in speech
no mouths would wander each to each.
Were spirits free from mortal mesh
and love not bound in hearts of flesh
no aching bre.asts would yearn to meet
and find their ecst.asy complete.
For who is there that loves and knows
the secret powers by which he grows?
Were knowledge all, what were our need
to thrill and faint and sweetly ble.ed?
Then seek not, sweet, the If and Why
I love you now until I di.e:
For I must love because I live
And life in me is what you give.
If there ever was an artist whose work should be associated with Valentine's Day, it's Jim Dine with his unique use of the heart image.
http://louiselarsen.blogspot.com/2011/02/valentines-day-jim-dine-art.html
But to miss it you will have to pay
With a kick in the can
Or a hard fryin' pan
The pain of which won't go away!
I love you honey!
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths
Enwrought with gold and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths before your feet.
But I, being poor, have only my dreams.
I have spread my dreams before your feet.
Tread softly for you tread on my dreams.
somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
by E. E. Cummings
somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands