A GENTLEMANLY VALENTINE: POEMS FROM 2018

A GENTLEMANLY VALENTINE

The Collection of 6 Manly Love Poems 

from 2018

An antique tete-a-tete Victorian Rococco Revival (love seat)

Those of us who celebrate the robustness of manliness cannot escape the handsome topic of manly love... While love is undeniably universal we gentlemen certainly have a unique spin on the theme. And that is yet another great mystery of human science that men and women may express themselves differently though speaking from the same emotion... that of love...

A Silver Art Deco Champagne Bucket With Cast Foliate Handles

There too is another spin explaining the way a poet expresses his observations of and insights into love. There are few times that I see love as either wholly perfect or flawed. I believe love is always a variably unbalanced admixture of what men would call good stuff and bad stuff. My optimism allows me to believe that love actually is more positive than negative. I believe from a purely logical perspective one can say that once love has transformed into something that is no longer wholesome it is no longer love...

It is the nature of the world in which we live, a world that has not changed so very much since human civilization began that outside forces as well as internal ones tend to cultivate and deteriorate what men call love. Love is always volatile, unstable, it is always only a summary of the people who define its evolution.

My poems explore both ends of the pendulum, all points along the trajectory and all colors in the spectrum extracting wisdom from the truths and contradictions of love and romance...  A summary of love that only documents those things we like about it is false! I am accustomed to digging down into the meat of love in order to discover its secrets. I can be a bit mischievous exploring places I probably should not go to but am compelled to visit because it is right there in front of me overlooked and underestimated by everyone else. I say about love what nobody dares to say...sometimes embarrassing love itself...

The six poems that comprise a Gentlemanly Valentine were part of an effort to craft 14 poems for each day of February leading up to Valentine's Day. Perhaps next year I should be successful at writing all 14. I found that even in the soulful planning of this Valentine's Day presentation I fell short of my ultimate goal much the same as lovers fall short of the realizatiin of their earthly passions.

Notwithstanding, it occurred to me that whilst the goal was arbitrary as it could easily have been 24 poems or simply 1 poem the primary objective had been achieved. What mattered was the content, the honest and bold explication of the phenomenon of manly... that is... gentlemanly love... if I could have conveyed the same message in a single sentence that it took six poems to achieve I should have achieved my goal... But language is intended to be rich and poetry is intended to reflect life using language in ways it has never been used... speaking truths in ways no man has spiken before...

Sterling Double Antique Champagne Bucket

The first poem titled Precipice examines the dynamics that two mature men bringing a great deal of lifes experiences  bring to a relationship.

Laid-down-love is an erotic sketch examining or rather re-examining the joys of lovemaking in the horizontal orientation...

In Deepening Waters explores the fear, commitment and hope that intensify as lovers allow themselves to become vulnerable in order to explore selfless love.

Inside of Love explores the boundaries of love in a comparison, contrast to its absence. It is a three-part poem including a prologue preparing the reader for the journey; a testimony that explicates the experience and evaluates love; and finally the reflection poses a sort of moral assessment and challenge.

Bluesmentation is a meditation on failed love a sort of lamentation if you will.

Un-named is a creative fusion of  fantasy and reality describing what I want from a lover and what I ultimately get from him.

I hope that you will enjoy this collection of love poems written specially for the occasion of Valentines day of 2018.


BIGDADDY BLUES

Antique Chinoiserie Love Seat

CONTENTS:

1. Precipiece
2. Laid-Down Love
3. In Deepening Waters
4. Inside of Love
5. Bluesmentation
6. un-named

Vintage Modern 1970's Love Seat Mediterranean Revival 

Precipice

We shall be strongest in a love that stays,

behind the memory of kisses from more perilous days,

that sued despair turning our finer discernment on,

shoring ‘gainst disillusionments of a handsome, star-dust gaze…

Our story is a secret softly rung,

with keener utterance than native tongue,

its footing imprints the soul of the soul,

sweet as the flowers it walks among…

How many horizons have we farmed for joy,

wearing the innocent placenta of a boy,

immune to the vicissitudes of life's decay,

whenever loves ephemeral vapour is deployed…

By BIGDADDY BLUES

Antique French Love Seat

Laid-down love…

Our favorite sessions ever… quote kinetic extractions from erotic lessons learnt whilst 180 degrees recumbent...

Recalling the steamy-aura of satin-embraces our figures briefly puddle in silken hermitage until passion stokes arguments recovering us for another blaze...

Our expectations return to the horizontal haven where sacred-lust blinds every other ambition enslaving them to favorite rituals bound by the helical climb of fused incense and body vapor…

Lovers who are familiar with the landscape make frequent reservations to pay celebratory homage to laid-down-love...

By BIGDADDY BLUES

A Neoclassical Love Seat

In deepening waters

If living for us

sketches me onto an out-of-body list,

does living for you preclude that,

I no longer exist…

can love replicate the absent-balance of my identity,

while self-sacrifice decorates the alter of love,

and are these offerings the embodiment of truths,

that grow the soul or a slow-drowning in ever-deepening waters…

By BIGDADDY BLUES 

A Victorian Chair Circa 1850's Rococco Revival

INSIDE OF LOVE

Prologue:

Love has two sides,

we are either outside of it or in…

finding our way back to that most handsome of homes,

finds us living for the promise of belonging there again...

returning purchases our earlier efforts that second chance to win...

TESTIMONY:

Love is always handsome from the seueded seat of a gentleman's directive,

that is if you are genuinely in love as opposed to merely-aspiring to be part of its collective,

when love is a manly goal… disappointments to its ruggedly soulful objectives,

might build rustic resolutions upon the direction-less escarpments of loves protectives…

But loves foundations demand precious time for heavy stones to settle, idling in the iconic muck of consequence, fortified against happenstance by virtue of the familiar… mired within stagnant pools of the unresolved, love builds upon its own ruins, crushing them into finer gems whose loveliness is consummated by a manly fire… belching with blind-certainty from the stubborn crotch of love…

New love gambles the delicate optimism of ideals,

its focus vanquishes the treacherous compromises flirted by our reals,

should a man's love flourish midst the worlds envenomed subterfuge and the altruistic emotions he feels,

he would own what few men have… what none can steal...

So then how might a simple man describe the complexity of love?

Its princely rush brandishes an ennobled blade,

But few men can cut away to its truth?

Its gallantry is too limitless for earthly grade,

but some men's freedom has mustered the conviction to be its slave?

its passion rarifies our mortal fuel suggesting elements of which spirit is made,

its measure is exact… to what man can extract burning the better humours of his being this side of the grave?

that is perhaps why true love cannot fade... ‘gainst it death cannot degrade,

can men see beyond mortality a sun that cannot wane? Should they be satisfied with poetic possibilities reason cannot explain?

Should a man recycle what once he imagined love to be, exchanging values that reckoned boyhood musings for safer postulations of manly possibilities… or blend what love was with what it appears to be…

Love was an ever-verdant fairway, manicured by myth,

love was a perfect cigar whose robustness lingered to the pith,

love was the panoramic gallantry blinding failure from consequence,

It is the monocle of existence… the flux of earthliness, presented with a gentlemanly handshake entreating us to the world inside of love…

REFLECTION:

Love is the penalty of everyman’s desire,

his happiness lay consumed by the treachery of its fire,

save those who are able to tame its flame,

by living inside of loves own game,

willingly diving upon its mystic pyre,

so brother if you must die then better to burn inside loves fire…

By BIGDADDY BLUES 

Sterling Art Nouveau Champagne Bucket

Bluesmentation

Used to be my boy,

Used to bring me joy,

Used to call your name,

Used to play your games,

Used to fill my nights,

Used to hold you tight,

Used to treat me right,

Used to sing me songs,

Used to treat me wrong,

Used to fill my void,

Used to be my boy,

Used to make me high,

Used to tell me lies,

Used to make my day,

Used to make me pray.

By BIGDADDY BLUES

Bent Wood Arts and Crafts Love Seat

un-named...

I’VE FANTASIED A MAN

WHO’LL READ POETRY WHILE I LAY

FEELING HIS LIPS PRESS WARMLY

AGAINST THE TENSIONS OF THE DAY

STROKING MY CHEST LIKE A DJINIS LAMP

ENCHANTING ME TO SLEEP…

HE’LL DRIFT MY MIND BEYOND

AND NOT BEGRUDGE THE TIME

ENJOYING THE SOFTER PRESENCE

THAT SLEEP HAS GIVEN TO MINE

HE LAY BESIDE ME

AND HOLD ME TILL I WAKE...

THEN HE'LL DRIFT OFF

TO SOMEPLACE I CANNOT GO

AND NO MATTER HOW CLOSELY I HOLD HIM

I CANNOT EVER HOPE TO KNOW

SO I'LL  WAIT... CAREFUL NOT TO BREAK HIS SLEEP

EAGER TO WELCOME HIM BACK HOME....

By BIGDADDY BLUES

FIN

Hammered Copper and Cast Silver Art Nouveau Champagne Bucket

Copper Art Nouveau Champagne Bucket with Cast-Bronze handles

Copper Art Nouveau Champagne Bucket with Cast-Bronze Handles

THE NATURE OF HIM

WHEN THE RIGHT MAN COMES INTO YOUR LIFE…

A MATURE DISCUSSION

OF THE NATURE OF “HIM”

PROLOGUE: By Bigdaddy Blues

Difficult as it is to capture the emotional essence of what we believe to be true love in plain words I believe we must at least make an attempt to do so. The documentation and study of love is the most neglected science in twenty-first century culture… Love it might be argued, is practically completely ignored if not altogether mistaken for sex…

But every man who has been fortunate enough to experience the very best of both love and sex will agree they are related but otherwise remarkably different creatures in their own right… 

I do not seek to define either love or sex through poetry, that would be impossible. Love and sex are as uniquely branded as the two or more people who share in them… this means that the role of poetry is rather to document the experience. If any definition for love or sex exists it would be credible only as a purely explicative tool fashioning a virtual but esoteric model of life. A poem like a newspaper conveying a story about something someone did should pull the reader into the very soul of an event that is already past or future history.

When I write about love, and this poem is mostly about love with accessory sex… I aspire to tell the audience what I learned about love and of course sex… It is as much a training manual as it is a fanciful mirage intended to freeze my memory of something profoundly moving and inspiring… I write about love because it is always upon my mind and when it is not a dark and story reflection as in this case it can actually be quite gay… pardon the pun… most important it is the documentation of a real experience.

So what I am saying is that I enjoy the sensory dynamic of my man… spending quality time together close and intimate. Our response to one another is mutually enchanting but it is a magic based in real life practicality. In other words we are both sexually and spiritually compatible… After years of painful experimentation with appeasing the worlds opinion of our relationships we have both decided to ignore the extra-social dynamic and spend the energy previously squandered there on understanding and appreciating one another. Since we are both mature men the prospect of living out our lives together is far more poignant and the reality of both our mortality is a reality we cannot ignore… This makes our journey all the more serious and at the same time it is cause to make the ultimate concession to each other’s truths… If this is the man I think he is I look forward to growing old with him and dying with him as my last and ultimate earthly love…

HIM…

As long as my man's, ebon-skin and the many handsome parts of him,

touch me, or lay near,

i’ll be a lion basking in recumbent bliss,

adoring the aparitif-cocktailed-whispers of his vernal kiss…

Because I know the timbre of his heart,

is but the gentle stroke of a chamelion’s brush,

fond of painting a joyous landscape,

upon the strata of my soul…

composing a familiar roar twixt loves intermittent hush…

Our un-solicited program boasts a seasoned cast of volcanic affections,

erupting from the lusty ambitions we’ve molded,

into gentlemanly doses of sexual nonfiction,

each climactic episode defines a rustically masculine cinematic direction,

keen to dramatize erotic hallmarks subtly floated above evidentiary detection…

My man and I have disobeyed the worlds intrusions, so our anonymity may replace the pretense of illusion,

freed from life's circus I’ve decided to always make him smile,

Rejecting love’s burgeoning basket of promises but for his,

believing the years will martyr me for trying,

Should I live to find my peace with him… I shall rejoice in it whilst dying...

Written by BIGDADDY BLUES

MAN I GOT'S THE HIDE-OUT BLUES

ANTIQUE WHISKEY STILL

THE HIDE-OUT BLUES

When y’uh come a court'n,

please walk past my door,

don’t y’uh come a'court’n,

cause I don’t love y’uh no more,

I guess that is the reason I am a lonesome man,

Content with cryin I ain’t even try'n t'uh score...

Love has got me hide'n,

but I still got my pride,

keep’n my pain inside and,

I can’t look int’uh my lovers’ eyes,

love stop pushin me t’uh try, another time,

I gotta tell y'uh before I love again I’’ll  die…

Love is like a sleep-walk,

without no road or shoes,

I says love feel like a sleep-walk,

d’aint no road or shoes,

e’ry time I goes that way my heart gets abused,

lawd I swears I ain’t playin roun no mo w’id dem sho-nuff blues,

  

I thought love would save me,

but t’ain't never been my friend,

betrayals have enslaved me,

haunting my soul again and again and again…

I’m consigned t’uh solitude,

till my final days,

while memories of sweeter times,

wash the bitter ones away...

  

When I sees it comin,

y’uh know what I mean,

man I starts a runnin,

so far it can’t be seen,

ain’t no lovin good enough a'n I ain't  addicted t’uh the stuff,

can't no sweet romancing make me stay,

Now don’t you go undress’n,

For I find I'm inclined t'uh look,

an lawd what an eye-bless’n,

sept I’d never bite the hook,

a'int trying t'uh pay no bills for d'hem midnight thrills,

baby you will notice nothin a’int been took...

  

Love can never find me,

cause I ain’t in nobody’s news,

love will never find me,

I can be quiet if I choose,

I walks too slightly for any pleasure that delights me,

t’uh turn me inside-out without a doubt I got the hideout blues…

One day love could save me,

though It’s never been my friend,

betrayals and lovers envy,

haunt my soul again and again and again…

man if I could trust your heart,

it might find me free,

growing memories in sweeter times,

washing the bitter ones away...

By BIGDADDY BLUES 

TAKING A NUMBER FOR LOVERS

A NUMBER TAKEN...

I kissed you in places that invited you to moan,

then discovered access was not mine alone,

but I could not suffer men who had visited before,

Just their rumour keeps me from visiting anymore…

By BIGDADDY BLUES

SOLILOQUY OF AN AFTER-VALENTINE

AN AFTER-VALENTINE  

After chilled-goblets have kissed and lay emptied,

when heart-shaped dalliances reservoir evidence of recent plunder,

then the slow-waning spirit of our lost-effervescence is cut asunder,

by recollections of distant, brilliant moments when we were more gaily arrayed with love...

O’ but to be so arrayed in a celebrated fashion when by our emotions we are formed into a fleeting masterpiece of unscripted passion, O’ to lay upon seduction’s very bed displayed... its a kind of instantaneous stardom that cannot be underplayed, a statement celebrated many lifetimes before it has been made…

Who would not like to know how to be that archetypal bas-relief of o’er-embellished, earthly pluperfection… in Edenistic repose, freshly defoliated and unencumbered by external fetters, naked unto a wisdom that realizes how much less can actually be better, cool but not overly self-conscious, not unbelievably suited to exceed rigorous inspection…

to be serene as each naughtily-entangled escapade unwinds, to explore uncovering more of lifes undocumented, erotic finds, at least that was how we were ere fates cooling fever bent our minds toward comparative reflection, ere sex and its philosphic rival love cut and set before our scrutiny entirely different cosmologic transverse and longitudinal sections, love was lost in a battle of critical-masses in-between the two or so infinitesimal directions it simply vanished! if for no other reason than because its mojo had no garantees or surplused protections…

we found that love was not exempt from the corrosive inevitabilities of corporeal-clay…

it matteted not to be cleverly spoken with a handsomely seductive inflection, gifted with a manly eloquence confident in its expression…

we longed again to be blessed with non-decay, sweeter every day, inviolate,  sumptuously talented at erotic play, posessed by a full-moon lust lasting into  day and e’er coming back to stay… to stay..

O' how sensuously grand it is to understand a players most talented argument, orchestrated for the aquisition of virtual trophies, won in a tournament of lovely things to say... but fortified at the end of the day, with a genuine gentlemanliness forged to overpower orgasmic fever, even when brewed with the blessings of a bed-shaking session… in the throes of a genital-induced testosterone-aggression, penetrated by the pinnacle of manly expression, living up to a mandingo legend carved from the fat of celebrated moans, ceiling-piercing ecstacy-screams and seductive overtones, enamored of the densely coagulating, vaporising lust-musk of mutual arousal, preoccupied with the utterance of un-metered gasps poured liberally o’er sex-sweated linens,  

There was a time when i was otherwise too focused on the prize to litter random commentary away, there being no lovers manual i am copelled to betray what silence has built as an art to keep eavesdroppers at bay, but there is nothing harmful for the nameless to say, who bring only the handsomest pleasure to my day...

Cheers to an unbridled lustiness too intrinsic to be an obsession, too natural to qualify as a lesson and too distant now from our pathetic ritual to expect a sympathetic rekindling, the romantic re-enactment of a love whose absence magnifies its distance from the habitual, our love has degraded to a soul-less malaise trapped in a bottles bottom as a dense bitter residual...

What is more, love has been absent too long to elicit pain and yet still speaks to an un-quenched yearning that laughs ironically midst the refrain,

But a rusty soliloquy manages some poigniant utterances evoked more as a lesson to lovers written in the thoughtful moments of dying days that says...

Empty bottles belie captive happinesses when released,

may not represent the expected and uncertain outcomes of wine,

wise lovers tend to rely on more reliable signs distilled from sexier times, farmed from healthier vines,

whose less-sober details do not conveniently evanesce when poured…

retaining most of the seductive profile that famously tempted each thirsty habit presented deliberately as a magicians rabbit marketed to titillate a lusty pallette rendering it pre-aroused as a stealth feature accessory to being lured...

Therefore, when life flows it’s vital vibrancy should be attended, for this reason provocateurs of cute naughtinesses come highly recommended, under their tutelege a soft, leisurely decadence is happily defended, offended by nothing save on the occasion that frolics should be prematurely suspended by prudence decorated as the most convenient wisdom thst can be ptetended…

Life knows only to continue spilling untill notified that it is ended, for the river it is preserves no instinct for conservation, extinguishing itself at the same time it effervesces in a glorious conflagration… after ever staging one last magnanimous cessation, as if death more so than love were mans last and most meaningful act of universalization…

The unknown promise of death threatens every breath and like the uncertain status of love paints indecipherable murals upon the firmament of life, without deference to the fates, its elements meander for eternities beyond the quaint embankments we occasion,

flirting with different shores as a glint of lapping waves gainst sun and moonlight with nautically-blown kisses... there is the burning and meaningful element an extinguished love misses!

Soliloquy ended!

Mostly our love has degraded from a visionary ceremony to an obsequious game a symbolic love mistaking habitual proximity for sacred intimacy once culled from the source where love was mined… its essence departed leaving no latent clues, nothing remains of the elements from which old passions were refined, we breathe the wind of a new situation and the past is a stepping stone to rejuvenation its deed is drawn and we have only to sign…

I say, nothing remains of the elements from which old passions were refined,

save an abandoned love  and the trappings it left behind, it is a ruin licked-away by time becoming the sullen scene of an after-valentine…

Written by : BIGDADDY BLUES

we’ve witnessed as pledged-affections are conquered,

by avoidable circumstances guided into being

we wonder how could old affections be forgot

denoting precisely what love is not!

WHAT MAKES GOOD SEX GOOD?

A BELLE EPOCH GUIDE BOOK TO THE PARIS BROTHELS CIRCA 1880

On a time if my partner, (or whomever I was having sex with at the time), did not immediately comment that our sex-session had been amazing I’d have concluded they did not enjoy the sex. I had every aim to please and since back then I was as they say, “Young, Dumb and full of... well… you know” I’d immediately re-start my engine and get back to the good work of pleasing my partner(s)!

GROTTO ENTRANCE TO A VICTORIAN BROTHEL/GENTLEMAN'S CLUB

A lot has transpired since those days of inexorable sexual robustness. Back then I’d imagined that I had a reputation to uphold. Today the erotic landscape is stratified much differently. There is a psychological, spiritual and physical buy-in, a “Trilogy” if you will not unlike for example, Experian, Equfax and TransUnion, the three credit bureaus whose combined/averages scores tell us what our credit-worthiness is. The sexual trilogy works the same way telling us what our sexual happiness is, it is an averaged-score of the psychological, spiritual and physical elements of sex which interface to produce a final sex-rating. Do you know what your sex rating is?

GRAND PARLOUR OF A VICTORIAN BROTHEL/GENTLEMEN'S CLUB

The psychological element of sex is the most fundamental and instinctual process. It governs whether we are initially sexually attracted to a person. It acts as a sensory device that processes inputs such as appearance, olfaction, touch sound and taste. 

The spiritual element of sex varies greatly because it requires an interpersonal connection that goes far beyond the physical and emotional, it is an intangible dynamic that ignites a unmistakably powerful fire which continues to burn even after sex. The spiritual sexual fire burns more intensely with each successive sexual encounter. 

The physical element of sex is the practical and utilitarian application of sexual styles and rituals and arsenals within a dynamic motivated and orchestrated directly from the psychological and spiritual elements of sex. 

So how does this academic efflorescence explain in simple terms what good sex consists of? Good sex is a balance of the sexual-trilogy and this means simply that it takes positive sexual chemistry to create good sex! Nothing could be simpler to understand. Theoretically then the more we allow ourselves to cultivate a depth of power in the regions of psychological, spiritual and physical expression the better and richer our sex will be.

Being a pragmatic man I believe in the power of practical experimentation. This means in order to really understand the sex-trilogy theory you have to applying it while having sex. Sex should never become a clinical thing. Human sexuality is all about doing the damned thing, having a good time, taking pleasurable notes then extrapolating the data in order to surmise what works to create a better, healthier more fulfilling sexual experience. The wonderful thing about sex is you’ve simply got to have more sex in order to get it right!

First of all there is no perfect score. Sex cannot be rated really as it is such a subjective phenomenon. It is difficult even to compare one sexual encounter to the next because the variables encompassing them are bound to be so vastly different. Learn to accept sex for what it is and walk away from it with the experience you get knowing that you put your best effort into making it as enjoyable as possible. My best advice for those instances when sex is not enjoyable is simply to stop, get dressed and walk away! you do not have to explore all three elements if you find a happy medium with one or two of them. Don’t be afraid to add an element you may find that it really does play a big part in your sexual fulfillment. I recommend to just be honest about what you like sexually and experiment! Experiment! Experiment!

Borrowing a famous line from the vintage espionage TV series Mission Impossible:

“YOUR MISSION SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT IT IS TO HAVE AMAZING SEX AS SOON AS POSSIBLE DISCUSSING THE SEXUAL TRILOGY WITH YOUR PARTNERYOUR PRIOR TO PLAY THEN DILIGENTLY DOCUMENTING THE RESULTS OF THE EXPERIMENT TOGETHER DURING OR AFTER EACH SESSION. THIS TAPE WILL SELF-DESTRUCT IN 5 SECONDS!”.

AN UPSCALE VICTORIAN BROTHEL BOUDOIR

Gentlemen, your mission has been assigned. Remember that only you can define what makes good sex but in order to be successful you should experiment with the sexual trilogy if only to add variety to your sex life. Good luck and many happy sessions!

Written By: Bigdaddy Blues

A LATE-VICTORIAN BROTHEL

A VERY SEXY CHRISTMAS

I meant to be naughty,
having kept an unpublished list,
of handsome desires…..
that flirted with my lips,
remaining yet un-kissed….

I lay awaiting offerings,
from votive lovers promises,
of softly denuded gifts…
set upon my passion,
in a fashion like festive garnishes…

Then a smile of arousal,
broke my gentle calm with mischief,
and dedicated cheer…
that kissed my body,
with a very sexy christmas gift…

By BIGDADDY BLUES