3 Steamy Poems: Valentine's Edition

Plus a sad song playlist...because, also, Valentine's

Yesterday I was talking with a new friend, someone who just lost her house in the fires in LA. (If you’ve been reading my last few letters, this is a different friend—meaning a second person who has lost everything to fire in the last month. …It’s heartbreaking just to type these words, not to mention processing that reality.)

While we were talking about a work project, we began to also talk about poetry.

And I’m reminded how essential poetry is to the human spirit.

How it is an expression of our innermost being, our life force. Not just the writing of it, but what the reading of it can do for the soul. So, when I think of the nuanced ways that we find strength through hard times, poetry is right there for us when we need it.

Photo by Seiji Seiji on Unsplash

But in the fast times of our 2025 lives, who stops to read poetry?

Well, today, you do.

In honor of Valentine’s and as a celebration of the duality of our earthly humanness dancing with our divine spirits, I’m sharing some of my all-time favorites; the first two are a little steamy inspiration for the weekend to come, and the third is a little quiet spot for you to curl up into.

And if this love thing gives you the icks, scroll down for a sad song playlist by our favorite podcasters, the Sad Song Queens.

Now, let’s get into it!

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Pablo Neruda

From 100 Love Sonnets/ Cien sonetos de amor

I crave your mouth, you voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger fo the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.¹

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shares of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for your for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratúe.

HUNTING FOR YOUR HOT HEART LIKE A PUMA…sorry, I need to catch my breath.

Ok, where was I?

Next up, my favorite poem in the world.

---

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

From A Coney Island of the Mind

That ‘sensual phosphorescence

my youth delighted in’

now lies almost behind me

like a land of dreams

wherein an angel

of hot sleep

dances like a diva

in strange veils

thru which desire

looks and cries

And still she dances

dances still

and still she comes

at me

with breathing breasts

and secret lips

and (ah)

bright eyes

I. just. can’t.

This poem slays me—back when I discovered it at 14 (maybe too young?) and still today at 46.

And now one from my favorite poet…

---

e.e. cummings

From E.E. Cummings: Selected Poems

look
my fingers,which²
touched you
and your warmth and crisp
littleness
—see?do not resemble my
fingers. My wrists hands
which held carefully the soft silence
of you(and your body
smile eyes feet hands)
are different
from what they were. My arms
in which all of you lay folded
quietly,like a
leaf or some flower
newly made by Spring
Herself,are not my
arms. I do not recognise
as myself this which i find before
me in a mirror. i do
not believe
i have ever seen these things;
someone who, you love
and who is slenderer
taller than
myself has entered and become such
lips as i use to talk with,
a new person is alive and
gestures with my
or is it perhaps you who
with my voice
are
playing.

---

For those not celebrating love and sex this weekend (which might be the majority), go ahead, indulge in some of the saddest songs of all with a playlist from the Sad Song Queens podcast:

And whatever you’re up to this weekend, know that I’m here, and thinking about you.

Until next time,
xxM

1. DAAAAAAYUM. This line kills me every time. Does not get sexier than this.

2. ee likes to flout grammatical rules, so all those spacing and capitalization idiosyncrasies are his choices, not my laziness.