billy burley

“Tonight I can write the saddest lines
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.”
― Pablo Neruda, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

“Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together.”
― Francesco Petrarca

“I crave your mouth, your 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 for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

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

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
Like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.”
― Pablo Neruda

“I want
To do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.”
― Pablo Neruda, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair