THE GEOMETRY OF LOVE
            By Robert Mauro

My love she moves in perfect circles
and me isosceles or all right angles.
When we did tend our fertile garden
to Tantalus we never begged his pardon.
The Greeks would be so proud of us:
she a peristyle; me an obelisk.
No sculptor could her skin suggest.
My body?  Braque -- Picassoesque.
And yet, and yet, our fertile garden,
we'd "plow and plow" in Homeric jargon.


                    BROTHERS
                By Robert Mauro

There is something familiar in the mirror about you
I see in me.  My hand goes up and yours does too.
I jump and you jump too.  My legs cannot stand
still as you run over the hill I cannot climb and
never will without some part of you pulling me
over the top with your dreams to be like me or
we or all the Greeks and Romans who knew a good
stone or tale when they saw one.  And one by one
we pile them on: one stone on top of the other
until in the end we've built each other: brother.


The following poem won a contest and is in my book FINDING
LOVE AND INTIMACY

      PLASTIC SURGERY
      By Robert Mauro
      
He would be
      her Michelangelo --
            chipping a bit off here
                  and there.
She would be
      his Dawn and Night --
            without flaw.
                  Just right.
He would find her heart
                  inside the stone.
She would be
       his masterpiece --
                      his own.
And then
      along came Leonardo
                who took her
                     for her smile
alone.


          I SEEM TO BE
        By Robert Mauro

I seem to be just like your clothes:
that bit of silk caressing you,
not tight or loose,
but fitting well,
something soft you slip into.
I want to keep you warm inside,
moving close to you, beside,
my love, a natural fiber
let me be.  My gnarly hand;
my knobby knee.
And when you want 
to be clothes free,
just take me off --
but lovingly.


The following poem is from my book
FINDING LOVE AND INTIMACY

   THEY SAY THEY FEEL THE SAME
         By Robert Mauro

Is it pleasure or is it pain?
Some say they feel the same.
What is this touching
that burns so intense?
Is it fire or is it ice?
Some say they feel the same
and hence....
The brain cannot tell
until the heart is frozen
or burned.
They both leave a scar;
One wonders how deep they are.