"matchmaker" poems
Already over the sea from her old spouse she comes,
the blonde goddess whose frosty wheels bring day.
Why do you hurry, Aurora? Hold off, so may the birds
shed ritual blood each year for Memnon's shade.
Now it's good to lie in my mistress's tender arms;
if ever, now it's good to feel her near.
Now drowsiness is richest, the morning air is cool,
and birds sing shrilly from their tender throats.
Why do you hurry, dreaded by men and dreaded by girls?
Draw back your dewy reins with your crimson hand.
The sailor marks the stars more clearly before you rise,
not raoming aimlessly across the sea;
the traveller, though weary, arises when you come,
and the soldier sets his savage hand to arms;
you're first to see the farmers wield their heavy hoes
and to call slow oxen under the curving yoke;
you rob boys of their sleep and give them over to schools,
where tender hands must bear the savage switch;
and you send reckless fools to pledge themselves in court,
where they take ruinous losses through one word;
the lawyer and the pleader take no delight in you,
for each must rise and wrangle with new torts;
and you ensure that women's chores are never done,
calling the spinner's hands back to her wool.
All this I'd bear; but who would bear that girls must rise
at dawn, unless himself he has no girl?
How many times I've wished Night would not yield to you,
the stars not fade and flee before your face!
How many times I've wished the wind would smash your wheels,
your steeds would stumble on a cloud and fall!
Jealous, why do you hurry? If your son is black,
it's since his mother's heart is that same color.
How I wish Tithonus could still tell tales of you:
no goddess would be more disgraced in heaven.
Since he is endless eons old, you rise and flee
at dawn to the chariot the old man hates,
but if some Cephalus were lying in your arms,
you'd cry out, 'O run slowly, steeds of night! '
Why should this lover pay, if your husband withers with age?
Was I the matchmaker who brought him to you?
Remember how much sleep was given to her loved youth
by Luna - and she's beautiful as you.
The father of gods himself, to see you all the less,
joined two nights into one for his desires.
I'd finished my complaint. You could tell she'd heard: she blushed;
and yet the day rose at its usual time.
10.1k
I only have one request: Please ask the boys to “audition” in front of the two way mirror and read the phrase “All her nibbly bits. All of them.”
I will know which one is just right.
I’ll see them all at 5 o’clock, 6 if there is traffic.
Thanks!
S*kelly ’14
May 16, 2014
May 16, 2014 at 9:57 PM UTC
where do they go?
to mountains of synonyms
pushing lilac or purple
or puce or lavender
from valleys
of russet metaphors?
do verbs frollic?
nouns place themselves
before mirrors
asking themselves
"who am I?"
adjectives, do they
answer?
do the long words
most people don't
understand
do they go on
spending sprees
with their
million dollar
Lotto winnings?
do conjunctions
play matchmaker?
or hitch up
boxcars for
the more expressive
poetic engineers
to haul through
the long winds?
ghosts of past tenses
invade present
and mixed metaphors
haunt the nightmares
of learned readers.
gerunds run on
their little wheels
and stuff their cheeks
with prepositions.
where do words go
when they die?
they must hang as
DANGLING
PARTICIPLES.
May 17, 2017
May 17, 2017 at 7:26 PM UTC
Chickadee and Neon
Appear to be in love
We noticed yesterday
The way they were looking at each other
They have been staring
Romantically
Into each others eyes
Since late last evening
Who knows what they did
Last night
While we were gone?
They may be different species
One is a multicolored glowworm
The other a blue chickadee
The odds seem to be against them
But true love knows no bounds
Overcomes all obstacles
And, ******
They're just so cute together
The queen of the universe
Is definitely a great matchmaker
Ah, romance
Ain't it beautiful?
Feb 15, 2011
Feb 15, 2011 at 7:08 AM UTC
Roll up...Roll up
the show is set to start
One playing for your head
One playing for your heart
It's time for an election
To see who rules the roost
Time for your selection
Who gives the bigger boost
Matchmaker, Matchmaker
make me a match
Pick me a President
Which one to catch
Matchmaker, Matchmaker
Show me a name
It's doesn't much matter
They are all the same
Roll up, Roll up
They're all set to speak
A ten minute talk
That may take all week
Choose either party
and their rainmaker head
make promises of fairy dust
You'll get once your dead
Matchmaker, Matchmaker
Show me the one
Who will unload the bullets
But, still own the gun
Matchmaker, Matchmaker
The time is now here
To pick a new President
Please ally my fears
Roll up, Roll up
The choices are few
I'm voting for one
But, I do not know who
Roll Up, Roll Up
The show's set to start
with enameled fake smiles
I can't tell them apart
Roll Up....Roll Up...
May 3, 2015
May 3, 2015 at 5:27 PM UTC
I think my grandmother is convinced
that my ovaries will shrivel up
if I do not find a man by summer.
She was married by 19,
and has always wanted great grandchildren
she loves buying baby things, children's toys.
Kindergarten is the golden age of life.
I did not date in highschool,
but if she saw me looking at a boy,
she asked if he was single,
and told me to ask him over for dinner.
When I hit University,
I found a sweet, mad, mess of a boy
and she was quiet,
but we went our separate ways,
she started up again.
Scheming, the unwanted matchmaker.
Asking if the piano player at church was single,
(he's four years younger than I)
and trying to arrange play-dates for me
with unwitting high school acquaintances.
She means well, I know,
but despite the hopeless Romanticism I harbor
I know I need time, (there are still open wounds),
to fall back in love with myself,
before trying to fall for someone else.
Feb 12, 2014
Feb 12, 2014 at 9:42 AM UTC
Oh, Matchmaker, with hands of silver and gold,
help me wipe the tears as I watch this unfold.
Oh, Matchmaker, you've given me Midas Touch,
but this time the pain is just too much.
I can't take what I've done -
but I won't bring myself to blow out her sun.
Matchmaker, with warm words so sweet,
was your plan to find a heart to beat?
I am nothing but Grand Matchmaker's puppet -
nothing but a slave to play His trumpet.
He made me watch, with ankles chained,
as my heart burned 'til nothing remained.
Grand Matchmaker, why not match me?
You've given me no choice, but to beg on bent knee.
Something pretty I've seen, and it makes my heart ache
to stand by and watch - it makes my earth quake.
But Matchmaker is what matchmakers do.
So forever, forever, will my heart drown in blue.
Oct 13, 2013
Oct 13, 2013 at 11:22 PM UTC
O Divine Matchmaker, pay heed to my plea.
I guard an egress open ajar, crusted by thorns
I guard this world against the odium behind it
I guard this door, not in service, Matchmaker.
My hands, grip on the barbs of this doorway
To keep it ajar, for a glimpse of my remittal;
Of the extant light of my sole soul so brittle,
Anneliese, Blessed with a name so celestial,
Anneliese, Cursed with a burden so menial,
Placidly fostering the lives behind that door.
Anneliese, my only mud-soaked nightingale.
O Divine Matchmaker, answer my quandary.
Am I to serve this world as an eternal Atlas?
Am I to forsake my mud-soaked nightingale?
Is our union ignoble to you, O Matchmaker?
How many unanswered sunsets remain alas?
In distraught, a thousand misereres, I penned
In every breath, I pine to pen a thousand more.
If only I had a drop of ink left…
If only I had a drop of ink left…
Jul 14, 2021
Jul 14, 2021 at 4:10 AM UTC
What's worse:
your parents telling you that
you are to remain single
until further notice,
or
the day
they decide that it's
about time they put you
on the market?
Feb 15, 2016
Feb 15, 2016 at 12:07 AM UTC
Cold. Distant. Lonely.
How am I supposed to explain to you how I feel when I don't even know?
When you have a girlfriend, but you still comfort me and soothe my self-doubt?
When we walk and converse together every day and I feel like I know you, but I don't know you?
Am I supposed to traverse this path alone, or with you, or with someone else?
It's fall and it's getting cold, so I need you to cloak me in your warmth and wrap me in your arms to shield me from the elements and my loneliness.
There is a dance tomorrow that I want to go to with you to, but all I've got is a field trip while your girlfriend is on both of our minds.
I just need an embrace, a touch, a physical sensation to tell me you care about me.
You and I and our friends know that she's the kind of girl who will break your heart, rip your already fragile and many times mended heart to throbbing, aching, weeping pieces.
Our friends try to play matchmaker, and I play a different game with the same objective.
How can you not see that she is like the others?
All her predecessors who fragmented you?
Won't she do the same?
But if you will not listen to reason, and true and pure love, then I only hope she will take care of you, cradle your heart in her hands and give it strength.
I hope that she will give you what you need, and more.
However, if she does not deliver, I will be here, waiting.
Oct 12, 2012
Oct 12, 2012 at 10:48 PM UTC
Cupid is a hard worker.
He constantly juggles
the loved
the want-to-be-loved
the unloved
and the unlovable.
Cupid is a hard worker.
He constantly makes lots
of matches
of pairs
of duos
and of partners.
Cupid has his own heart.
Is he, himself, one of
the loved
the want-to-be-loved
the unloved
or the unlovable?
Cupid has his own heart.
Does he, too, have
a match
a pair
a duo
or a partner?
Cupid is a matchmaker.
He finds love for you and me,
and I can't help but wonder
if he's alone as alone can be.
Apr 5, 2018
Apr 5, 2018 at 1:31 AM UTC
It was a woodcut in our high school history text, Unit 4
Beginnings of the Modern World, that so disturbed,
from the Nuremburg Chronicles depicting the burning of the
Jews, flat perspective,
faces of the victims among flames, in no particular agony, not
especially Jewish,
during the Black Death 1/3 of Europe died 1347-1351 alone.
Although
you die together you die alone.
Earlier that week, I had attended our 6th grade's performance of Fiddler on the Roof, thinking
Coltrane should have recorded Matchmaker as a bookend to
My Favorite Things
but as the play darkened
with the town's absorption into the diaspora, democracy
yet unthought of and rule of law a fig leaf for authority
Jasper, who played Zero Mostel, delivered his line well to
the effect
you're just doing your jobs while wrecking our lives.
Anyway, nothing like that is happening here, is it?
The gardener planting tomatoes, the gravedigger finding skulls,
there is so much life a little death won't matter.
Jasper
was a beautiful ham,
big as Zero.
A friend posed
this question: must all states be melting pots like the United States?
I said yes
not because they should but since
it's inevitable. Let labor flow like capital!
America was the last word of the play and brought a tear of pride
to my eye.
Immigration, exasperating argument re the Other.
How many's more than enough? 9 billion, a rational,
real number that exceeds or we're convinced
is within the carrying capacity of the planet.
Climate change is the new Black Death.
I like the Amerindian body type and face mixed in with the
European, African.
The irrepressible economy rolls out reams of logs, ores of
elements, bags of ice, fields of rice.
Embargo. The moon stares, bare, full of interstellar space.
Better a cold shoulder than a visit from our military.
The crazy Nazis must have felt themselves extraordinarily
compassionate toward the mother, earth, the goddess,
history, or some such abstraction and, thus, acted on a
fraction of all they did not know.
Selfless soldiers just doing their jobs guarding the border or,
on the other hand, collecting ****** for the burning of the Jews.
Aug 11, 2015
Aug 11, 2015 at 6:58 AM UTC
I tried to make him right for me,
see I believe in fairy tales and happy endings.
Maybe my Prince just needed a little nudge.
So i got all the wrong things about him,
and tied them up with a neat bow.
I was busy searching for love,
instead of waiting for it to come find me.
That was probably cupid I passed on the street,
I rushed by too fast for his arrow.
I played matchmaker for my lonely heart,
Got it all torn up in pieces.
I deluded myself into thinking I couldn't breathe,
I counted the seconds waiting for my heart to stop.
But it pumped on and on so slow,
It hummed to the sound of your name on my lips.
The name, that would make my heart skip a beat.
But now it just filled me with resolve to leave.
See I wasn't gonna cry another day over you.
Wasn't gonna die cause I couldn't have you.
I was going to learn to live.
I could have been with Mr. Right,
Instead I lay in bed alone, crying to the night.
Where did I go wrong? I tried to change him.
But he didn't want to be saved, he knew what it was.
A good time that I coated with love,
A relationship where he felt trapped.
See he was a free spirit and I the hunter,
I trapped him and tried to make him mine.
So am back to the point where it all began.
Finding my heart and starting it again.
I want to be the girl that makes someone stop,
the one you've been waiting for all your life.
No more Mr. Almost right for me,
Or Mr. Close enough to right.
I'm gonna wait for you, I know you're looking for me.
Dec 21, 2013
Dec 21, 2013 at 4:17 AM UTC
She said
You have to meet my friend Jen
I managed "ok then"
So she did a barbecue
The only guests, me and you
Then she said
Tomorrow such a lot to do
Oh my heavy head
Talk among yourselves you two
I must go to bed
In the sky one shining star
Since that night we have come far
Apr 28, 2012
Apr 28, 2012 at 11:36 AM UTC
-----------I weave my grand mother's spirit to life--------
when I paint with my words what she dreamed
in her life. My grandmother's kimono sat in the dark never
worn; so needs a dusting--I lift it up into this light to be
seen, to be heard, to be felt, fabric of loving heart
dreams to be. It's not perfectly shaped or tattered or torn,
rather fermented beyond her time to take form. My
Grandma loved to eat her white rice she ate thirty
seven million grains of rice by the time she reached her
104-- Born on a sugarcane plant'tion on the coast of
Oahu, a child in the tropics then a teen in Japan. Her
family returned to their roots to learn, & grow, reenter the
cultural force. She discovered her new talent as
------------------------------
K I M O N O
A R T I S T
------------------------------
Kikuyo Yamamoto became
liberated as an artist and then
her life changed as her family
demanded she leave her position
and marry away to a Japanese man
who lives in California (my Grand
father). The matchmaker said it
would work really well....She
endured life as an American farm
wife, then life in Japanese intern-
ment camps. Five children, nine
grandchildren...Dear Grandmother
I know you had lots to surrender-
I honor your life as mother,
grandmother, and artist --I
wove this poem in the form
of a kimono for you May your
spirit rest in peace. I love you.
May 12, 2019
May 12, 2019 at 2:42 AM UTC
Is it worth it to love someone that doesn't love you,
to let someone in that is only going to wreck u,
do u blame urself or just let go?
Should u let go if you love?
Love is complicated and hurts
makes you want to cry
Is the person that hurts you
Supposed to hold you?
Or just watch you break?
It's an enigma, a myth
Because how could fate be cruel
Send Cupid to play matchmaker
For beauty and the ogre.
Are we just destined to love
The people that won't love us back?
or is that a sick twist
The joker has in mind.
Trying to walk away
And ending up back at your door
Do I sink into the abyss
that is calling out my name
or do I fly away on broken wings, broken spirit that somehow you make whole.
Let me go if you can't love me
Don't let me go if you want to hurt me
You are my Achilles heel
And will be the death of me.
Dec 5, 2012
Dec 5, 2012 at 2:21 AM UTC
If it would be up to me
I would be facing now
...
Rocks
Cool elegance
formed by the flexuous splash
Wild is the temper belonging
to the change of the impending season
the bleak-dark growing deep inside
A passion higher than the unreaching
tangent of a sharp urge unable to cut
by a smoothing of a creamy surface
Opaque by nature
hiding explosions inside
Bearing mysteries of the swallowed sounds
of seasons
Seasons of all the knowing
Covered by ...as if
the fabric of the unknowing
of the autumn waves
of the sea that grew teardrops
Washed away at once
by a fierce Splash
Shifting the mind
as the slapped face of the shores lamenting
remerge
Covered with its courageous green
A regenerating variant elongating savor
to the nose coloring the mind
by the help of a long Forgotten
rush of the algae unseen
diffusing Joy
drifting the rhythm
of a piano of a Turkish contemporary
unlikely to be heard through this maddening
storm where I am standing tall at the edge
In perfect effortless balance
Saluting the gusting and the turbulent
of all sides encircling to provide
the stillness of a home at hearts
As they used to do
O
My friends
Stay Stay this time!
As if a song
flourishing
the smile inside
As I used to do
gestureless
and they would see
But I will need to cross soon
the horizon approaching
Vertical
I only came to see you
One more time
embrace you
the last time
walk with you
through the bazaars and bridges
Our memories trapped in tidal fluctuation
Spanning generations over the Bosphorous
traces of dolphins patiently carrying
holding on to the edges
of old fishing boats
Wood hardly bearing
these ashes made of stars
Waiting to be born again
by my one look into the water
like the first one
A cry of eternity
and Today
I am heading home already
crossing this place only
where you brewed me to love
in this old drawing of truth
plainly framed
hanging
on this play
for a farewell
Ashes to alight to the sky
sculpting the light of poetic alignment
of you and I
in the eyes of the loving
A deliverance of Enjoyment of the being
Shall be my duty says a passerby carrying
The matchmaker's match for all
Until the final journey
where I shall eternally Stay
Stay this time
but
I am heading home now
I only came here to set you free
Oct 25, 2016
Oct 25, 2016 at 9:21 AM UTC
I've undertook the most grueling of tasks
Of matching numbers with the alphabet
I'll soon have them all coming to me
The greatest thing since eHarmony
Standing in the numerical line
With the alphabet I came to align
Spelling out what will come to be
As easy for me as 1, 2, and 3
Right away I matched up A with 22
Thought as a couple they looked mighty cute
The crowd liked what I did so they asked of me
To find the perfect letter for the odd #3
That's when K stood up to say
That he was next in line
I knew there and then I'd found the perfect 10
So I matched him up with #9
I didn't have much luck with setting X up
It never worked out somehow
I tried and tried with the cute #5
But he has stood her up 6 times now
I worked and worked from daylight till dark
Proud of the progress I made
Taking the alphabet and the letters they met
Each giving their hearts away
But I still have a bit of a problem
I seem to have run into a snag
Though I've found the perfect match for much of the alphabet
I still have plenty of numbers left
Feb 23, 2014
Feb 23, 2014 at 4:03 PM UTC
While the moon bears our blood, we
think about someone we just met but
only until the moment the trade winds
blow the dust aside
An empty saxophone fills with air, playing
sadly until the moon stops to listen
He had to leave early to care for his life
He told her he needed time to fall in love
He thought about the way she smiled
He wanted to believe in her instincts
Was it her imagination that became impatient
Or the way he wiped her brow with her scarf?
It doesn’t take long to know, ships that
pass always remember; looking through
a silk scarf feels the same way, the airy
fabric enjoys trading the dust thread for
grain
Lonely circling bleeding making people
fear for their faith; allure matchmaker,
lovers together, feeling the tides within
crashing upon their desires
It was the time to be bold
Her eyes said so
But scarfs can fool a man and dust can
fool a sparrow; how would he know the
difference when it was his imagination
that must decide between moons passing
through shadows and misty eyed longing
that for a moment begged him to stop
sailing by
Aug 29, 2015
Aug 29, 2015 at 10:10 PM UTC
So used to being,
The matchmaker
The connector
The ugly friend.
I was hoping to be intoxicated
By someone else's love.
Instead I get sparks to fly between two
Attractive, good-looking, well-spoken people.
And I may be be lucky enough
To live out my life in the company of a cat or two.
I told him that we had been talking.
A friend of mine, she had mentioned him the evening before
Said she found him cute.
He reciprocated,
And so some undetermined seed was planted.
A fetal relationship's egg had been fertilized.
And there, I stood
Watching as my work was completed.
Yet it could not bring myself to admire it.
I left my job that evening
With hopes of falling out of sanity.
No such luck.
My experience included
Standing next to my best friends as they kissed at midnight.
And I just basked in my awkwardness.
Maybe someday I will grow out of it.
Or even better?
Maybe someday I will learn to embrace it.
Jan 7, 2014
Jan 7, 2014 at 6:21 PM UTC
We are stuck_____ in a turmoil
Her pantry
All red tape
Her can good's
on him?
It's my pleasure,
And he's as painful
Spinning wheel seizure
So tinny
tiny Tim foil
Long neck-------- giraffe
Life too short he's the
end of the kabob stick
My pleasant passenger
is lovesick
Mom's lips he rattles
His eyes of the
snake
Like Arby's smoked ribs
So pleasantly
on his tab
The Webster hub
passenger drinks
Pub
Bet Ya baking Trump
truffles hum?
((Nescafe Escape))
Carmello latte- James
Bondman another passenger
Mr. Sandman twins
of duct tape
it says___
((Where I End))
Where I begin
her money vault
The piano player
Billy Joel the strangers
My own flesh
and blood
Cousins and
Arsenic and lace
poison
Threw them
over the threshold
Elvira siesta greyhound
My pleasant
passenger
Secretly pulling teeth_____
mistletoe at birth
Caught in his fire
from Bruce
Springsteen
birth
The messenger
singing
Fiddler on
the roof
Matchmaker
make me a
(Outer Rim)
space station
The orange juice
his
Pulp Fiction
The argument
Please let there be
Yankee fans
Take me out
Don't ball me out
The game with my nephews
Buy me some cashews
and
Crack-Up Jacks
My pleasant passenger
I don't care if
he ever comes
back
Mary Mack dressed
in maternity black
The funeral came with her
right-hand
messenger
Newborn
life assignment
Bravo applaud
Not everything is
so pleasant
Contradicting
My pleasant
passenger
Couldn't
comment nothing was delicious----?
Rebirth reassignments
Come at me
consignment place
Second hand or
twice around
Another passenger
coming to town
I screamed he
had no face
bandages
Robin Hoods**
The passenger gobble up
seconds poor our goods__--
The first rich
May 27, 2018
May 27, 2018 at 3:40 PM UTC
The angel in disguise
Matchmaker
They call him.
But his arrows
Were never aimed
At my heart for me to find
My partner through time.
They're shut
Directly unto my chest
Attempting to
Stab me to death.
Nov 22, 2013
Nov 22, 2013 at 11:07 PM UTC
Names
There are some names
I should avoid - names like
Circe, Achilles and Helen.
But when you've lived with them
cheek by backside they become
more than just first cousins.
One was a washer woman
with crazed varicose veins.
who never failed to turn me
into her pig.
Another was a matchmaker
who ruined a whole series
of futures and who would ruin
mine had I given him the chance.
The last was the woman
who floated all my little boats
then sank them so I renamed
her, spayed her, infibulated
her history, sewed her name
so tight to her thighs that it
became a single letter on my
dry tongue.
She is now a single capital.
A bridge between her legs.
I sailed between those thighs once
then never spoke of it again but
our war of silence went on for a
decade till eventually she moved on.
To Paris.
So I let those names die, their myths fade
because their realities, their histories, were
too nauseous to be a part me anymore instead
I dog tied myself to other less exotic names.
Jan 28, 2014
Jan 28, 2014 at 8:09 AM UTC