Amore
If looks could kill I’d be a dead man walking.
Your drop-dead beauty has me in its spell.
If I were deaf, I’d yearn to hear you talking,
For beautiful would be your words as well.
You’d be a perfect film noir femme fatale.
You’ll always win my beauty pageant prize.
You’re more than just an ordinary gal,
You’re my own God-sent angel in disguise.
James A. Tweedie is a retired pastor living in Long Beach, Washington. He has written and published six novels, one collection of short stories, and four collections of poetry including Sidekicks, Mostly Sonnets, and Laughing Matters, all with Dunecrest Press. His poems have been published nationally and internationally in both print and online media. He was honored with being chosen as the winner of the 2021 SCP International Poetry Competition.
James, this is such a precious love poem. I may be among the few who thoroughly enjoys such a beautiful treat. I have written so many of them including 400 love sonnets among my 600 sonnets (more sonnets than the next closest in history, Petrarch, who had 317 sonnets). I have been tentative in sending them to SCP for publication except for the challenge Susan Jarvis Bryant provided one year and one I provided. In any event, this is deeply and sincerely sentimental in the best sense of the word. Thank you!
Enjoyed it too, Mr. Tweedie, as no doubt did the recipient.
Awwwww!
Well put, sir.
Someone once said, “Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.” 🙂 But from the depth within your beautiful words, I think that your eyes–and your heart–will see the beauty you describe for your whole life. How happy and secure the recipient must feel.
When I saw the illustration chosen by Evan, I assumed that the poem was about the Pygmalion and Galatea myth. But after another reading I saw that the poem could be a personal comment directed by the speaker to his wife or girlfriend. The only glitch is that the femme fatale in a film noir is generally evil and destructive, while the woman here is angelic. But then again, James may simply be using the phrase “femme fatale” to describe the lady’s physical beauty, and he needed a rhyme for “gal.”
Lol. Actually, it was the other way around, the “femme fatale” came first! And, yes, the image isn’t reflective on the sinister conventions of the phrase but on the strong, sensual, intelligent allure of its cinematic and potboiler stereotype.
Oh, and of course, a little wickedness might also be inferred!
This is so sweet, James. If I were the recipient, I would melt.
Very lovely poetry – and love fatale/gal as a rhyme. My latest (free) poetry newsletter deals with the topic of anaphora, which your second stanza exemplifies in that “You” is – highly appropriately – the lead word. Excellent writing.
All the transcendent touches, James, well expressed in his own ways by an overawed simple lover.
If only, James, you had waited until you were seventeen.