Inveterate flatterer

If you let me, if I’d let myself

I’d mention you in every mouthful

Once, at 15, my father said; Stop talking about that girl, I think you’re obsessed!

I was, without yet acknowledging how deeply these things can go

Forget an arrow, your harnessing of me is a tattoo as inked as the one I already have

If you were a sadist you’d say; Good. Now crawl to me

I suspect I would.

Absence is a devour and every hour a little harder

It’s a tortured song locked inside my chest

Awaiting your key.

You, you, you, the bird who flies without feather

You, you, you, the permanent loan against my sanity.

In restless chamber of night, I wake feverish, imagining

Your cruel hands on me, the cull of my longing to lie

Beside you, above you, beneath you, inside you.

The funny thing is, you don’t try, you never have, it comes naturally

Like walking on hands or juggling, neither of which I ever mastered

As you master me with the flint in your eyes and the quiescence of your tongue

Sharp teeth catching against your damson lip, ragged once in a great while

I have become a collector of moments featuring you

The turn of your full cheek set against certain light, eloping into smile

I want to dose you with a spell that you’ll feel

A tenth, a quarter, a handful.

Even as you are a wild thing and I knew it then, as I know it now

A creature who enjoys the pin cushion of being desired

Each gentle intrusion bringing a little fresh blood

Painless for you

A hammer in my heart.

Underwing, in indigo darkness I envelop

My unspoken entreaty and braid it into my hair

With every twist, pulling tighter, for my darling, wishing is

Often pain.

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This dance is for the dead

Would that you would stay

would that you were ever mine

would that you knew how

you strip and stir those tender passions

sterile of any other life

I am blackened with desire for you

I am white with inordinate stifle

see the end of the bottle how it glistens?

With promise and her velvet touch she

summons,

turn to me, burn with me, set me alight

leave me wrecked on your shore, blistering

this is why I breathe, to end in your gaze

this is why I ache, to imagine just a glance

this is why I die, to lose you without ever

having

there’s the rest and there’s one girl

she’s a woman, she’s rage, she’s not gentle

she can’t be caged or capitulated

the stroke of her fingers on metal

she’s tearing you up with her untouchable ways

ruining others, for they seem tame

comparison is the enemy of the weak

she laughs at your charade, your belief

she’ll ever want a thing from you, nothing

further could be true, she’s so far removed

reach for her, she’ll bite you in half

try to be tender, she’ll laugh in your face

howling another’s name just for sport

indifference is her game, she’ll toss you

aside before she’s arrived with your petty

longings and your wounded heart

she’s little and she’s huge, she’s magnification

and cruelty and searing everlasting beauty

I imagine lying next to her and it’s a joke

the nearest I could get would be a parallel universe

made of pins and needles, volcanoes and tsunami

your beauty is a storm of urges unspent

my secrets just flowers of passion unsung

feeling your way in the dark is your favorite dance

you’re roaring in your sleep and breaking the sound barrier

you compete for breakfast and throw the weak over

for the sharks

there’s nothing between us except everything

even if I were not myself, I could not be close to you

you abhor connection, you loathe obsession

fearless you parody their love of you

with mocking abandon like a ballerina

needing no shoes

you write songs with the pen of a bloody mad woman

you tattoo desire into my chest with sharp knives

thrown from a mountain

all the while not knowing what you do

for I do not exist and neither does time

it can harp and beat for a hundred years and I wouldn’t run out

of want, just the means, just the methods

just one time, just in a dream, just fantasize

shut your eyes, turn off the light, stand still, run

your voice over broken connection

nimble fingers strumming a line

from another time, one where you give me

one moment, I stand behind you, watching

the shape of your conquer

chaos in the surge of everything

anger, rage, beauty, madness

you can move someone without touching

you can devastate someone without speaking

no injury and it hurts worse than breaking

egotism in a glass vase to be shattered

where we go, nobody will know

children of night, children of satiation

I heard you sing in the past when I didn’t know

names and places, people and feelings

I was a dead thing dancing to numb haunt

you stepped toward me and I saw you

a dervish in halo, a god within a devil

nothing else, the crowd cleared, it was only you

so sure, so dark eyed, with your torture

curling me around your laugh like a rocket

I burned and drank it down and the flames

made me golden

plug me in, I spin on electric want without power

you stop and start, you shout, you demand

you scream at the complacency and kick the rulers

I am a dead star above your night, I am

the person you were before you were born

I inhabit your meaning like a false note

there is only nothing and nothing comes with

a voice until you speak

into my freeway, driving at 100 mph on

drowning streets, they cry for your attention, you

giggle in irreverence

no fault of yours the whole world adores

someone who cannot be won, or succumb

to usual rules, to anyone’s need, it’s always been

about you, about you, about you

i’m happy here, stretched on your rack

beginning to enjoy poison and its benefits

for we make aches out of wants and wants

never cut too deep, they die as they are

absorbed into daylight, scars making scars

you are the eternal night you pull me in

I struggle against your tide, you want to drown me

with your sharp loveliness

it’s your control, it’s what you know

you have the bravado of a broken angel

words leave me struck through with arrows

secrets are best left buried

dig me up, let me whisper, I would say

it’s always ever been you

say it once and I drop to my knees

I was told it was wrong to worship

I was told it was wrong to believe in

perfection or need

you open your red mouth

i’m watching, I’m writhing

how are you still moving? Didn’t you

die? Didn’t you stop breathing?

Turning in betrayal, you can

only betray when it matters

nothing matters to girls made of stone

they sing to the siren and the siren

blesses them

this dance is for the dead

desire so long it’s bent double

it hurts to enter the temple

you burn me every time you don’t notice

but that’s your way

that’s who you have always been

untouchable

untouchable

untouchable

 

Will

Does the wood pigeon know?

when he calls his coo into the night

the cats who stalk will slink toward

the smell of blood and feathers

as I have gathered myself into quills

and spices sealed in alabaster jar

the sum of me is traveled

through moon and sun

like a cut orange leaves her

stain on wood, sticky and bitter

as your imprint has become

my mandala and the furtherance of us

defies life and death

shaking itself off like a dog released from bath

will hurtle, maddened, toward nearest escape

I grew my vines in your wood

my embers are your fire

this melange of you and I

twined like grapes gathering sunlight

before first frost

and the women take in the clothes, hanging on frozen line

even as they capture the day’s warmth

you stretch in this paper thin life time

sew the jagged edges of my need

with your ivory needle

as if we were part of the same

garment

held up

by

sheer

force of

will

She is beauty

If her heart were a drum

it would be outlawed for beating too loud

for the insistent and unwary pound

keeping wakeful when those who rest

wish for silence

beneath her is a lake of feeling

if a mime enacted, his black cloth fingers

would grow numb with gesticulation

his elbows fatigued from the shapes

her wordless passion smacked into

taut skin

trembling at the imagining of her

proximity

she breaks a sweat on the fine hair of her neck

a necklace of pearl and moonstone

for each sway of her fruiting body

she is the picker of her sanity

a welcome devil in empty playground

she blinks into darkness, seeing futures

in one, she is swimming in dark water

the stars illuminating only her want

reaching shore, she searches for her among shadows

trying to imagine the way she feels

naked and shaking off

the spill of her longing

in another they are talking

far into time and beyond, where

landscapes break open pink and ochre

like food consumed by gods

she cannot yet tear herself away

from the smoothness of her skin

or how her cheeks slope like arching

cats, pulling beauty from places

she didn’t know existed

she cannot yet reach out

run her tremulous and urgent hunger

along the narrow slope of her shoulders

and dipping into honey, find a

succulence beyond anything yet tasted

she is a terrifying girl who

knows her power and still

is lost at times to its art

the wince and crimp of her slimness

like a willow tree, capturing storms

she holds her head like a wave

cresting against soft shoreline

proud and a little self-assured

the quivering arrow of her curves

tie like a bow around desire

burns in its simplicity

her skin is mango and sunlight

of all her lives spent

before she was found

still like a water fountain

just before it bursts, released from clay

there is harmony and music

in her tread and no one yet

has found the riddle to her heart

something distant and wafer thin

like a fabric of unknown origin

it is not her wish to change anything

but the temperature she feels

when they press against the other

beneath roar of blood and live wire

crackling into cuplets of lightning

it is not her wish to alter one second

save the moment she relents and

sensing something good

releases her perfume and all the

capture of her loveliness

till they mingle as one energy

burning their quickening on the tail of

some unearthed connection

where beneath the moon they

reach for each other and not

the solace of being alone

lying in a circle like warm petals

she draws her hand slowly

over the silk of her

without words sufficient

holds her breath

as long as it can stay

spellbound by her presence

the entire world paused

in reflecting pools

oceans

never deep enough to

swallow

the intensity

of her regard

for she

is beauty.

Starlight

If I met you now

I’d fall in love with you all over

though you are much changed

as I am

we have gone through the fall of leaves

seen ourselves turn from green to brown and then to silver

with each tread something is lost, something is found

the people we were at first

are gone as the flowers in that vase will be soon be dry and thrown

to return to earth and become something similar and altered

when I look back I cannot remember exactly who I was

though you are always clear in my mind like

a pure magnification

I see your unwrinkled brow and the folly of your youth

bandy-legged and laughing, your chin thrown back

I smell the moments that touched us then

and became unrecognizable bed fellows with

a bitter taste

perhaps you can only stay so long

dancing to the same song

before you need to move away, into the dusk

feeling for familiar, among unfamiliar

there all over, I would choose your hand

there all over, we’d move in tangent and harmony

your fingers touching that temple within me

that bows to your breath

my eyes bright in the darkness searching for your lips

if there were universes we could travel

and you and I were living light years apart

I believe we’d meet over and over

as we are born from and go back to time and again

the

starlight

that made us

 

Quenching

Her shape

puts me at peace

lying propped up, one elbow jutting

one foot lolling out of damp sheets

curled in a knot of former movement

the wind outside is hitting moss covered shingles

like it wants to join in

clouds swirl like drunken sailors over-head

she has a strange gait

as if unsure of being girl or boy

yet her legs are as straight as a dancers

envious I suspect of my curves

the tattoo that begs to be planed

for every vein and every vessel

we are ever waiting to reach deeper

the fusion of two lovers

one defying gravity with breasts like pinches

mocking those half her age who struggle to stay

retroussé

the other a drunk without bottle

swimming in fear and loathing

tempered sometimes by her steady hand

pulling me to discomfort

where pier lights wink til past the witching hour

relieved nobody burning needs

quenching

 

Cadenza

What is life?

but a pinch

a child’s voice garbled underwater

sinking like stone’s cadenza wish

for more or less

but just

this round

made with cupped hands

holding cream in meshed fingers

lift me over the wall

what do we discover?

in gardens walked with made

 

I have been unable to let you out of my blood

you are the circle of red wrapped around my wrist

a memory of starting point

whistling in cold pirouetting trees

I light an amber fire

to keep you from passing by

don’t stop

don’t call my name

cool the snare about my self

I may recognize

I may respond

It was ever my way

 

you had my brine rubbed into permanence

I was pricked on the thumb

the cast of fate showing me our join

a thin silver line not wide enough

to separate us

the villain lies in that ache

birthing longing on your shore

will you pull me closer

stitch ever, the bind fastening

a snatch of braid

wound like ivy to darken

descended skies

in timerous pause

Lovers for everything

I’m so cold

my fingers are chaffed to crepe

and I think of you

curling my bunions and split ends into smiles

you who thought my high forehead, regal and grand

you who turned my flaws into delights

misting unflattering mirrors to better light

I think of you and how

I felt when you regarded me

with the bright eyes of love

that dimmed and winked out

gradually until even the blind could see

you no longer held me in your esteem

that’s when I told myself

don’t depend upon the love of others

to hold you to the light

do not need the touch of someone who desires you

to be all right

but who am I kidding?

even the flower

the feral cat and mocking bird

the sky, the earth and all between

even the damn puddles and muddy stream

needs someone to say to them

you look lovely still

you make my heart skip a beat

even if it is a bush or bramble hedge

maybe out there in the wild there are

lovers for everything

whilst I

try to find in not being loved

the companionship of silence

but it is not

no it is not

good enough

for quiet endurance does not have

your caring arms

holding me from the world

turning me from lead to precious metal

nor the ardor of your eyes

reminding me to shine

when I think I cannot

no

that hope is lost

the day you turned your head

no longer delighted by my flaws

I am just ordinary now

and a bunion is a bunion

sticking out of my shoe

at rude angle

as sorry as any malformed bone could be

to lose such fantasy