This year, International Dylan Thomas Day invited people around the world to help create the world’s longest love poem, via an initiative called Love the Words. At 3793 words, we are pleased to say that this literary feat has been achieved. You can read the final poem, collated by Hannah Ellis and Mab Jones, below. Many thanks to those who contributed.
Love is positive and negative,
Love is pink and black,
Love’s lovely, when you’re coddled in it,
Love’s awful, when you’re not.
Love is as good as anything,
Love is your velvet murmur
poured like kindness across the driest day,
Love is better than chocolate,
Love is as beautiful as roses,
Love is the best gift.
Love is your favourite song,
Love is two and a half
minutes long
with a hook
and a middle eight.
Love is a book you can’t put down,
Love is a welcoming home,
Love is like a medicine
healing you when you’re broken.
Love is as warm as a fire
as soft as silk,
Love is like a big warm cwtch,
Love is like a tingling sensation.
Love is like a warm hug,
Love is like a warm couch,
Love is as heartwarming as a twinkling fire,
Love is like a cosy home.
Love is elusive
a ghost in the woods
an echo of something that may not exist.
Love is holding skin against skin
so knuckle and bone can wear not thin
and hollow against the wind.
Love is not silver and gold spun
and pinned as time holds thin,
Love is a cannibal
it’s eating up my heart.
Love is like a banana.
Most people devour it
half-raw. But, if you
hang on until it’s mature
it won’t look so pretty but
it’s probably better for you.
But when it’s mouldy,
it’s best to give up on it.
Love is a trickster, selling quack remedies;
they taste good at the time, but rarely cure your ills.
Love is not a cortisol,
Love is caused by oxytocin
and exists solely inside my head,
Love is a DNA polymerase.
Love is not a drug, it is a wake-up call,
Love is waking up immune to the harsh, drab, ugly world,
Love is like a red red nose, pustulated, swollen and sore,
Love is sadness at not being able to do that one little thing,
Love is like, a pot hole, deep, destructive and makes a bumpy ride.
Love is the most important part of life.
Love is what you leave behind you when you go
and what you bring with you when you arrive,
Love is grounding, centring, stabilising,
it’s the foundation of everything,
Love is the anchor of a balanced life.
Love is family,
Love is the moon you have given me
the children we have raised,
Love is a strong bond between siblings.
Love is knowing that the phone will always be answered,
Love is your partner’s grandson finally calling you nanny,
Love is when your partner doesn’t mind you warming your cold feet on his warm legs
or when you tell your dying mother that she’ll be home soon.
Love is my morning cup of tea delivered daily without fail
just the way I like it in a china mug
brought to my bed as my eyes flutter open.
Love is her work-roughened hands
slicking your hair into plaits
tying them with new ribbon
you thought she’d forgotten to buy.
Love is heavenly bliss
dogged perseverance
stubborn and determined
appreciative, warm, and safe.
Love is hiding the darkness
so the light shines through for those special
and making sure they are never blinded by the blackness.
Love is a watery eye
that reaches out
to soothe the pain
of someone you never meet.
Love is. It’s me. It’s you. Us. Trust, peace, hope, joy…Passion, fulfilment, together, alone.
Love is a connection,
Love is when you can’t live without someone,
Love is passion,
Love is a need,
Love is like a hot fire burning.
Love is a dream come true,
Love is the best feeling,
Float on air
spin in the white gold sky
melt and mould into your body.
Outside as I drink your taste, your smell, your smooth perfect
Skin, drown in your smile, your soft laughy voice
Feed you breakfast one strawberry at a time
Love’s an apple. I swallow the pips. A tree grows in my belly. The fruit swell, so sweet. They ripen in my eyes, and at my lips.
Love is a brief encounter,
Love is our eyes catching
across a crowded room
or when sitting side by side,
Love is the skipped heartbeat you will never recover.
Love is a carousel of emotions and rollercoaster of senses, beyond, above and embracing the tidal dance of a candy floss shared.
Love is the missing piece of a lifetorn puzzle,
Love is the song of souls entwined at home or in the street
long is the day without you
and night is really hard until dawn,
Love is unforgettable moments.
Love is a cream lace veil and a posy
of full-blown yellow roses,
Love is the sparkle of a ruby ring
to mark forty years of wedded bling.
Love is like rope-making
long and strong as Victory’s rigging,
Love is a scratched gold ring
wearing thin on my wedding finger.
Love is listening to the nightingale
with you in Bidbury Lane,
Love is often having to say you’re sorry!
Love is stealing away for the bittersweet balm of your scent on an old smoke-perfumed scarf. Like a washed-up seashell, its secret stash of mind-etched memories explodes like fireworks, reigniting for a moment the now grief-worn bond we treasured.
Love is special, cherish it forever, it’s forever lasting. Keep it close.
Love is powerful
Love is as powerful as a queen on a throne,
Love is digging deep on the darkest days,
Love is an incorruptible feast in the midst of the massacre.
Love is brave and fearless,
Love is having a word with bullies at the bus stop,
Love is allowing your heart to crack open a little,
Love is existence is atomic matter is love for people you don’t like.
Love’s a tough nut sat on the barstool of fools,
Love is giving drunken advice, like Dylan,
Love is not all you need, but without it we cannot live, only survive.
Love is locking the Boathouse door and unlocking the freedom of flight like the curlews above the mud flats and between the lamposts: Caitlin and Dylan, each side of the Boathouse door.
Love is the painter, the humble creator, the keepsake curator, the willing spectator, the bare knuckle truth, the unwilling narrator of all that has been, and of all that will be. Unpackage the paper and I’ll be there later, as long as you promise to love only me.
Love is the eternal flame of the soul,
Love is as bright as stars,
Love is … walking through parabolas of light,
Love is a useful touch when I’m about to fall.
Love is…sweeter than sunshine and happier than dancing moonlight,
Love is the cool breeze of dawn,
Love is the mysticism of the waterfall,
Love is trickling rain.
Love is the spring giving life & clarity that ever flows, ever changes down to the sloeblack sea & even then in the bible-black surrounds, it ever bows but never breaks to find its true destination.
Lost
In an infinite forest of emerald trees,
blue morpho butterflies,
desert roses where
Green parrots soar above our heads, sapphire macaws sing in ceiba trees and
No ceilings or walls or rules can ever hem us
In.
Love is the glue that binds atoms together, love is the stuff that keeps the stars apart, love is what stays long after we’re gone.
Love is as light and bright as dappled heavenly stars.
Love is as happy as a bluebird that sings on high.
Loves is as, illuminating as the moon over a stormy sea,
Love is a reach across the ocean,
daring to hope after decades of
sitting quietly below craggy cliffs.
Now she dreams of the land with
bullrushes where he is hidden,
camouflaged, but like her,
in search of the bedrock,
a place of re-birth.
Love is like a map that always shows the way.
Like a wild horse
in a field of fresh blooms.
It’s an untamed creature
always running away.
A saddle will dull it.
A whip will still it.
Let it run fierce and free,
though it sometimes escapes you.
Those moments where it lets you
nuzzle it, and even ride its back,
for a short time, are precious.
Love is a choice,
Our choice,
Not yours,
Not mine,
Ours;
Love is like
What you feel,
When you feel,
What you said,
When you said,
We would choose,
What we chose,
Together:
We chose new
Electric-driven
Wheel-chairs,
Together.
Love is simply this:
It is a tandem of wheel-chairs
selected to get her, moved a
distance to get him by simple
harmonic movements of coord
inated push and pull match made
pinkies .
Love is a many and splendid thing,
Love is the beginning, the middle and the end,
Love is special, never let it go,
Love is everything,
Love is all.
Love isn’t perfect,
Love isn’t hate,
Love isn’t wasted,
Love isn’t expectation,
Love isn’t what I thought it would be.
Love isn’t when you’re the person behind the gun,
Love isn’t about one person,
Love isn’t just yourself,
Love isn’t just liking something,
Love isn’t easy, but it is unending.
Love makes positivity and honesty possible,
Love makes your heart melt,
Love makes your life shine,
Love makes me dizzy.
Love makes your smile show,
Love makes people happy,
Love makes everyone happy,
Love makes the whole world happy.
Love makes me writhe in the sand,
Love makes me feel alive
it gives me wings to fly
and be myself
Love can rule the world,
Love can be one person or even twenty,
Love can cheer a rainy day.
Love can bring people together,
Love can make you feel cared for,
Love can plug a hole in a sinking ship,
Love can make you smile.
Love can bring you down on your knees
or swinging from the trees,
Love can fill your life full of colour
and the noise of life
but when torn they can pour out into the void
leaving only the blackness that is empty of sound.
Lovers are the luckiest people in the world.
Love gleams in the darkness like a candle lit for strangers. Love leaves traces of a butterkiss and unexplained behaviour.
Love rides on the back of a Triumph motorbike.
And the girls who are not quite sure why they are there, will not miss a beat. Though he doesn’t quite have it, they reach for a touch of it, anyway.
They will never forgetta the kiss, the lip, the voice, and the kiss-me-quick hat.
Love gives your soul its music and teaches you to sing
Gives the world its colour but gives the bee its sting
Sweet as shadows, dark as honey, true as midnight, blue as steel
Vanishes like fairy gold, feels twice as real.
Tears for Love are rain drops on a spring flower.
You are the blossom that never fades.
The forget-me-not, the Myosotis at play, before the sun sighs a sweet retreat and lunar lands on our shared conspiracy of elation.
My world suddenly filled with all kinds of curious wonders of the mind and heart.
Your kindness is so soft, as sweet as a flower, your smile is so sweet it could be devoured.
Oh it’s you is enough you are there and here…
In a gentle way, you can shake the world…
dawn after dawn, a world the shape of your face
Two horses lie
side by side
asleep in a field
that’s as green as
forever
Their compact bodies
echo each other
hoofs pointing
the same way
into the future
This, this is love
The salt marshes of love, longing and designer black shoes, betray the fact my heart’s composing, tap tap, boom boom, the signature of you.
The bureaucrats call it a hill but the mountain will look after our love, my love.
Without love. It feels like paper boats, caught in the rain—waiting for a breeze
a streak of moon leaking through a coverlet of clouds, a flash of sun firing the fields.
Listening for the first time to what someone is saying, instead of waiting for the chance to spill all the things on my mind….
I love you from your dandruff to your corns.
Sellotape love
It rips a layer of skin.
Minutely thin.
A copy of you
Mapped out in glue
On plastic strips
I wish
to keep.
when i joined the love club
i had always mocked before
all the ballads
and love songs
i ever heard
came back to say
hello
we told you so
now go go go
love changes
FM radio sop
into an everyman gospel
and
stops me falling off the world
Amor c’ha cor gentil ratto s’apprende. Love, enter quickly in a gentle heart.
Struck from the air by the first arrow
One last bolt
Blood-red and brilliant
Starlight that kissed your lips
Blood-red and brilliant
In helpless world
Oh! love
Joined Beauty command
and flowering
transparent dreams
Teach us, Dylan, to love as you did,
being dizzy, with falling dreams
and when Love comes
teach us to walk down an ecstatic line of light
to taste on our lips
the breath of indigo and the emerald kiss
The key; the lock; love.
You are what love is.
Loving yourself is just as important as loving others.
Love brings the world together.
Love has no limit. Find it, keep it, cherish it.
Love’s head is not in the clouds- her feet are on the ground, bound and determined to outpace hate.
Love’s cry consists of magic and understanding.
Love heals wounds.
Everyone loves someone or something.
Everyone deserves to be loved.
Embracing your love means caring and sharing.
Communication and tenderness are the path to love.
Show extra love for your enemies.
What goes around comes around. Make it Love.
My life song! My heart song!
I’ll keep living love until my hearts stops!
If we could love each other gently and immensely and true, it’d mean that I could be me, and you could just do you.
a love as profound as peace, which wars against strife, and this love which soothes scorn is more selfless than devotion, but a love which fears betrayal is hopeless. it turns to a love as intense as manifesting anxiety, and ends as a love as sheer as fabric which unravels.
The endorphin is the end, the end is the beginning of The Promise…
When the smallest lights are dying away
Where can we turn
But out of near total darkness
To the nearest potential love?
The element that makes this the real thing is its imperfection; how it knows it’s the nearest it can get without flirting with frivolous fantasy.
Love
is often watered down and diluted
by forces of hatred and division
but continues to fill hearts of many
with wings of desire allows us to stay human.
When hands,
And feet,
Are incomplete,
Love is as patient as a pinkie;
Love makes pinkies move the lever,
On a 12 volt battery chair;
Love makes together chosen
Movements match like
Synchronised
Tindered
Wheelchairs.
l is like the wand that brings magic in all that we share
o is the everlasting ring that celebrates our pure bright golden love
v are the wings that will allow us both to fly into the heavens when our mortal vessels are needed no more
e is the rocking chair that we both share, shading us from the harshness of those who ever wish that love fails.
Yes it is a word, but it is so much more.
A fleeting perfect moment that evolved
Like a caterpillar that finds itself as a butterfly that flies and flutters into the heart of another
Yet if captured will show the symptoms of sudden entrapment
So let it roam and soar and feel its own freedom to roam as it is wont to do
Because another will surely fly by.
Love, irrespective of caste, colour or creed, is what is needed to save humanity,
From the incessant calamity.
Show love, show care, show your concern,take action
Stop all discrimination.
In the end, the love you make is much more important than the love you fake
You love full as a Universe, and I a thimble,
Though that thimble is an ocean more than I could ever love before…
Between his first and last breath
a man has to decide
to spend his time dying
or loving:
Love, giving is living.
Love causes pain.
It can seem cruel, heartless,
an unlicked boot heel. A stone.
Long is the day without you
and night is really hard until dawn.
To be imprisoned in your heart
would be a life sentence
I yearn to serve….
Magnetic pull, the tug of pure energy. Planets circling one another in a state of constant tension. Who will succumb first?
You can leave if you choose, dear Love, or you can stay -All I ask is you dance with me some of the way.
“Even in death she surprises me” was what he said.
Evil is love backwards, heart squeezed until it cries.
It’s cold, it’s dead, it’s here to stay
A tennis score, that game we play
A losing game, a battleground
Its labour’s lost
An open door, it’s just a drug
But your strange alchemic kisses
Made me drag you to my bed.
True love I got a glimpse of you; turn the wheel, take me higher.
Love – strong or weak, big or small, lost or found – you choose!
Love letters, pinned
bloody hearts on
the windows of the city
tears, stars
lips for kissing hungry
dew….
Love when it blesses us
when it wrongs us
in the body and in the soul I sink the nails
in her full with blood heart in the flesh naked
I devise the kiss
Love stabilises my mind
Love calms my core
Yet sends senses into overdrive …
love most welcome unexpected guest why am I so blessed that you should find my door
Your love envelops and caresses, as the light summer breeze to the trembling aspen.
An explosion of crystal, prisms of bright light casting shifting rainbows on the surface of a fast – flowing stream.
Asteroids and asterisks
Loving words are wishes for good nights before the moon burning light.
Love takes heart and mind, body and soul.
In the still quiet centre of you
is all the love there ever was
in all the world through all time.
love heals with a cwtch and a word and a sigh,
love is a well that never runs dry.
We thought then love to be a language of our own
Which daily found new alphabet and rhyme.
Whatever love was, now is, like a wrapper from Fry’s around the nostalgic.
Love filtered into my consciousness like spring woodsmoke.
My love is as Welsh as the soft Spring rain!
The hope without anchor, the cross without keys. All these pubs and more without counting or naming will be huddled in our rainy Welsh town when we too are at rest.
Reach out for the love of our youth from a specific space in the Mumbles that I can only see.
The Englishman stood before me clutching wilting daffodils and a large leek, it was the 1st of March. I knew then this man would be the love of my life.
Swn y Mor is the sound I hear, deep in the dunes of my heart, as your voice calls out over sandy shores, the sound of the grey, grey sea.
The wind in the sand-rooted pines whispers our names, and waves caress this shore of dreams.
On the shoreline between waking and dreaming the heart waits, for the tide to turn and return for love is the movement of the sea, not the flowing towards, then past, of the river, desiring the sea to dance with.
The sea’s shifting blues move through his full eyes – and her heart sets sail.
Pier, chips and you.
When you left
the world became
an empty room.
Should you return
the new furnishings
may take you
by surprise.
It’s hard to find, a many splendid thing
Like a butterfly, changes everything
Calling your name to find the same
Probing your heart to know my presence there
The last word I heard …
“Love was a friendly smile when I was crying,
love will be a tender memory when I’m gone “
Love’s absence is cups held too close to the heart
helping loneliness from hurting the hands
I loved you then, I love you still, I will love you again when life’s bonds are loosed…
Without you I feel like I am missing a limb.
Hearing you is the happiest sound,
the saddest sound is not.
A mother cradling her newborn through the smog of unslept nights.
I loved you before I knew Loving, before I even knew of your name.
I loved you before you were born.
I cupped your hand, a clenched fist,
in my hand and you opened
a tentative quarter inch.
Born in a moment, caught in a glance, given in a smile, bound in a sigh.
And I will love you when we are only dust and memories and faded photographs…
To see yourself through another’s eyes, the way you could be if you tried…
It’s patient, kind, beyond compare.
It’s all you need, it’s all around.
Not every pleasure needs a weight of name
Your smile’s enough to blow me into flame
Tongue lash lick, touch to mark, bite sweet black, hollows of bone, moon glints soft on skin. Made to belong. One to the other.
True love is true desire; turns heat into fire.
there’s a love more secret than thoughts which intrude into solitude
Tangled in our bumping, waiting for something better to do.
hey hot boy you are so hot I think you might cauterise all my wounds
Our bodies remember the bends and hollows of each other.
Our hair entwined, a beautiful knot…
My beloved, you run through me like words through a stick of rock
Hold the moon in your hands as you grasp the clouds seeking to shadow her sweet silver complexion; Under the quilt, the rustle of muscles, the promise of the charms held in the safety and thunder of your arms.
Love💜💛💕💗❤
Curving
Skyward
To blue vastness
Of days
Halcyon dusted
With sparkly bits and bobs afloat
In champagne bubbling brooks
And streams
Tracing
Soft, serpentine contours
Of rivers
Waterfalls, splish splashing
Tears of joy
Cascading confetti
Spaghetti
Sauce
And fine red wine
Mama Mia
Here I go again
Cupids bow
Pings arrows
High arching
To bluebird fly
Somewhere
Over the rainbow
Wrapped in the arms
Of a stratocumulus
Love will catch you
If you fall