Midsummer Poetry Week, Day One

Welcome to the start of our Midsummer Poetry Week on the Lindsay's Romantics blog! Here to open are two poets from my own local writing group: Alan Calder and Margaret Maguire.


The Chemistry of Love

Sin from thy lips? Oh trespass sweetly urged!
Give me my sin again.
William Shakespeare


Two specks of nubile dust coalesce
In the infinity of space and time
A low probability event, it happens
Anywhere called destiny
Or is it really down to chemistry?

Hands melt together in warm caress
Fingers knot round fingers
Keeping in fond light touch
Enough to fan the next flame

In the dark quiet corner
Lips seek out soft quivering lips
The passport gateway to all else
Four slivers of flesh colliding
Teasing, searching, sensing
Pouting, puckering, pressure
Signalling passion explodes in
A hormone high tide that
Sweeps them far upstream on
Waves of strident urging molecules

Phenylethylamine sets them on fire
Dopamine makes them feel good
Norepinephidrine makes their hearts race
The level of sinister serotonin drops
A symptom of another form of
Obsessive compulsive disorder
Or the up phase of manic depression
Plato said it was a mental illness

A cocktail chain that binds them
Drowning them in each other
Lifebelts invisible in their blindness
Two hermit crabs outside their shells
Nature’s drug fuelled purpose
Storm troopers from its Ministry of Population
We know what it wants, it isn’t pious
Our ancestors whisper in our ears

Addicts in that chemistry of life
Cast on that sun kissed beach
They build a castle in the sands of lust
But who would want to say
‘I’ve fallen in lust’
With its Biblical bad press and baggage
Better to call it Love-Stage 1
In love with the idea of being in love

But beware of the withdrawal symptoms
If you’re abandoned there by your mate
The opposite of love is empty grief
Only you can say whether it was better
To have loved and lost than never loved at all
If you break up try not to break down

But who told dopamine and friends to strike?
Not every kiss leads to short term bliss
Is there a winged messenger?
A chemical cupid twixt lip and life
A pheromone that throws the switch
To say that A’s ok a compatible genetic mix
But B’s a frog, get real, no chance

Do we really want to know that?
And have to find a mate in a lab
Dating adverts, chemical formulae
It might save time for lonely moths
Who never seem to find the flame
Pheromone free zones perhaps?
Let’s leave this part a mystery

Once you’ve found it will it last?
Not that drug fuelled phase
That keeps the heart cuffs on
The tide goes out to leave an itch
To scratch in four to seven years
Time to make a babe or three
And move on to Love- Phase 2
But some are primed to seek others
To extend the human gene pool

So then the love struck junkies
Addicted to that initial ecstasy
Need that aching surging rush
They start afresh along the shore
Condemned to play there forever
Singing that same old song again
Does anything grow in salty sand?
Or is that backward moral bollocks?

If you’re lucky and patient
You will find the soothing peace
Of deep and everlasting love
The novelty of the sandy beach
Must move onto firmer ground
Built on a million memories
And foundations of all things shared
No high pressure chemistry
A gentle balm of endorphins entwines
And oxytocin keeps the cuddles going
It’s in our psyche to work for
What nature makes us desire

A long journey not a sporting event
Evolving with the seasons
Each with its different rhythm
Facing life with one mind
All an investment in fusing souls
Together till death do you part
In hope to meet again
And do it all another time

Alan Calder


My Life long friend

To start our journey I send a kiss
For a life of wedded bliss,
Our first home sparkling and new
A love so faithful and true.

Our lives to spend together come
What may to stay forever,
This we will learn from one another
Truth, love, joy and sorrow.

The journey is never going to end
With you my life long friend.
Many explorations to be done,
The future’s going to be such fun.

We may travel far to distant lands,
Or simply stay close at hand.
When life has gone, we will journey
On through all eternity.

Margaret Maguire

[Pictures by Victor Harris from the garden of Barry Kellington.]