Love poems are generally abstract accounts of your emotions and will rarely mention an individual's name or the exact way you feel about them, but rather, use subtle hints to express the depths of your feelings. This is what makes it a love poem and not a gush of soppy sentiment - most of the time.

A poem declaring your love for someone else is the ultimate in personal literature, so you need to make this work in your favour to touch someone rather than being laughed at for being too cheesy or sentimental. The balance between too little and too much is the key here.

All poetry should be based on a passion for your subject and a need to get that passion down on paper to share with others or, at least, to act as a sort of therapy for yourself. Love poetry should be both.

Love is universal but at the same time is unique to everyone. The easiest thing to do in life is fall in love, but getting those feelings down on paper is much more of a challenge. Poetry is a way of expressing yourself in words that you could never actually come out and say without sounding ridiculous, but in a few short stanzas and verse on a piece of paper, they make perfect sense and can touch someone much deeper than any trip to Paris, diamond bracelet or expensive gift could ever do.

Your poetry is your own so you can be as passionately real or as abstract as you want, and that's the beauty of a poem: there are no hard and fast rules or a template you must follow. Poetry reflects your soul, and when it comes to love poetry it contains both your heart and soul. I would only suggest that you have to believe what you have written or you cannot expect anyone else to believe it. You should not be afraid to look deep down inside yourself when you write your poem; all inhibitions should be tossed aside.

A poem does not have to rhyme, it does not have to be corny or cheesy - just because it's a love poem - and it does not need to mention names or places, as long as it reflects everything you are and all you want to be, as an individual and an part of the love you are writing about.

The first misconception that you need to distance yourself from is that a love poem will be sickly sweet: the kind that's all about how you smile, how blue your eyes are, how you dress, how your hair smells, how I'd die without you and so forth. Remember that love is not always a good thing and when love has gone wrong or is unrequited, the words seem to flow better (a sad but true fact). Dark love poems can be the most touching and emotional because they reflect all our inner demons spilled out onto paper. This in itself can reflect our inner souls and act as a form of therapy for both the writer and the reader, to show that you are not alone in this feeling.

Poetry of any kind, but especially of this nature, should not be forced. Do not sit down thinking 'I'm going to write a poem' but instead take a walk alone, look out your bedroom window or just take some quiet time to reflect. Think of things you experience when you are in love (good or bad), how you felt before you met this person and how that changed when you met them. If you think you have found true love, ask yourself when the defining moment was and how you felt at that time.

If you are writing about an individual think about the things you like about them but also the things they like about you, things you fight about, things that annoy you about them, their quirky traits, etc. This will make your poem personal, but not too overtly so, so you will still keep your audience and hopefully, the one you love.

Learn more about this author, Marilyn Justine.
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