Poems

Doled Out Love

 

You dole me out spoon by spoon

Week by week and I must not leak

Into your other life, with the wife.

I stay and play this game

Despite my shame

Because I like you very much

And I tell myself in any case

That this is enough for me for now.

Although all the while I quietly hope

That age-old adage to be true

That you’re much more likely to meet someone

When you’re with someone

Even when that someone is not entirely with you.

17^th April 2006

 

Bumble Bee

 Our stolen rapture makes me sing – feel new

You have captured me despite my ‘no’ – determined you

And while a few clouds spatter spots of rain

Upon this, our April bud

Acting it seems to me, as reminders that this love will stain

I look away for now and stare into the Sun

For it and you have at last brought me spring

And like a drowsy bumble bee awakening

Have made my heart live again and quietly hum.

19^th April 2006

 

The Brush Off                                            

It’s only sex she says

With a toss of her tangled head, that flames red, red, red on her head, her sex with a blaze that’s hooked me, looped me, cooked me, duped me.  With a shrug of her shoulders skinny without baggage just bony with bones she’s proud of that give her scrawny rough-tough frame wings of an angel, a holy, punk carriage like a queen of the dead.

It’s only sex she said

As she rolled out of bed to roll a fat spliff that she sucked on, so hard and  hungry it glowed white hot while lagoons of smoke bled out from her perfect nose, a split pink rose and from out of her cruel mouth that she rounded precisely into a hot, black hole.  Into which I slipped and crawled, groped about for a hold, a rail, a plank, for her wet tongue that could curl itself about the fear she was making me feel with her words.  Her words, that screwed with me, bruised me, blew me off, used me, abused me, wanted to lose me, screwed me.

It’s only sex she says

Only sex…. when she holds my sticky heart in the cup of her hand so gently it feels like a safe bird that wants to sing to her, cling to her, leave my sting in her, like a last fuck.  Only sex…..when her sweet, nail-bitten, guitar-calloused hand raises me so hard I want to thrust right into her heart and split it a little bit more with each jut…..only sex, when she tears at my back screaming that she wants us to die right now not the night – no the night, she wants that to take flight, to grow and drown us together in its forever black.

It’s only sex she said

And I need a drink she said and got out of bed and took a slug and another and another and another.  Why?  Never ask why.  Never ask why.  Never ask.  Cut me she said.  Just cut me.  Cut me like heat through butter, like a razor on paper, like paper on skin, like wire through flesh.  I need to let something out, something in.  I want to feel the opening up of my skin.

Cut me now she said and put the broken glass in my hand like it was a ring, our marriage, a shattering.

It’s only sex she said

As she wiped the sweat from her belly, the cum from her thighs like she was scraping the grease off a plate, scrape, scrape, scrape, scraping the grease off a plate, that thin sheen of grease; the glaze between love and hate….it’s only sex she said yanking on a torn T-shirt of the Grateful Dead over her tangled head where it got stuck.

Fuck I said. Fuck.  Fuck.  Fuck.

October 2010