My Love Poems

April is National Poetry Month. So – having authored a novel as well as books about politics, coin collecting, and what I hubristically call philosophy – it’s time for my poetry book.

My wife Therese Broderick is the real poet in the family, with a degree and everything. When she started going to open mikes, I’d go with her. So much left-wing stuff, I once remarked. She replied, “You should do some right-wing poetry.” Not that I’m really “right-wing.” But I tried; it was very hard; the left has all the good tropes. So my first effort was, actually, a parody of a lefty rant. In fact I titled it “Rant.” After I read it at an open mike, one gal gushed that she loved it. I didn’t have the heart to ask if she realized it was a satire.

But my poetry book is apolitical. I had also started giving my wife poems for birthdays and anniversaries and like occasions. This past Valentine’s Day she surprised me with an album housing all those poems that she’d kept – and encouraged me to publish them.

The edgy and imaginative title is Love Poems. (I preferred Love & Sex Poems, but wifey said no.) It contains 37 poems and poem-like things. Some are indeed sexy, some serious, some sappy, some silly (this is called “alliteration,” it’s a poetic device), and a few in Spanish (which my wife has been studying. My own high school Spanish being pretty rusty, I took it as a challenge to see what I could do with a limited vocabulary; though I may have cheated a bit using Google Translate.)

This beautiful book (well, the binding and printing are beautiful at least; done by 48 Hour Books, I can’t recommend them highly enough) is attractively priced at just $3.99; plus $1 mailing cost (within USA; Paypal OK; e-mail frank@fsrcoin.com; address Box 8600, Albany, NY 12208).

But here is a free sample – this one was for Therese’s Fifty-first birthday:

THERESE 5.1

The latest version!
New and improved!
Fully updated and state-of-the art,
Retaining all the best features
Of the previous versions,
While fixing, of course,
Their bugs and glitches.
I want to launch you on my desktop,
With soft mouse clicks,
Through my fingers
That caress your icon,
My face pressed up
Against the screen,
My eyes devouring
Your luscious code,
Stripped down to
Its naked noughts and ones;
I want to penetrate

Your open logic gate,
You killer app, you.
I can hardly wait
For Therese 5.2