I can’t get that scream of hers from out of my head.

She knows doesn’t she? It’s better for you that she does but I don’t know why - it makes me feel sick.

Frozen. Perhaps by tomorrow I will have thawed.

I don’t know how I’ll be then (warm and welcoming of course). Let’s hope another sleep will put my mind at rest

This is not a change of heart - just a temporary arrest.

You've read it before, but it was you who accomplished the last stanza.

Rub a Dub Dub

[La Poete feels he is a pie to be consumed,
or a sex-machine operating in anonymity,
or dead in his coffin.]

Rub a dub dub. Dub a rub rub. Three men.

That ancient tub. Slaughterman, pastryman,
Purveyor of waxen illuminations,
They all conclude with the disposalman,
Whose parlour is papered with liver-pate
And filo, carpeted with trippa and tunge.

Four candles spit and hiss at quarters, melted
From cawl fat, stuck in cornets for candlesticks.
This pie perhaps for eating: a casket
On puff pastry stand - stale coffin,
Cover, discrepancy of a tumid
Sausage ballooning from snug access hole
In a lid that's shone to warm glaze by thighs,
A one-horned croissant on a coffin lid, finger
Wrought handle of flesh, manipulable,
Solemn church candle with the fiery wick,
Handled one by one by an endless column
Of deathscrewing girls spreading round the corner.

Screwed in, in the dark, blinking at the dark
Plush in pitch black, who perceives what he thinks
As he dawdles, back arched by the adjustable
Pad of velvet keeps his electric loins forced up.

For a price, pastry can be carved so client
Can indulge curiosity - fear not
His face: a one way mirror means he can't
See you, that gravyman, cannot sense your
Ecstasy of rut, apart from randy clench
Of muscle deep within your bellyspasm.

Does he sleep in there? Do you think he knows
We're here? Or is he just a stew of giblets
Organs, aslosh within the box, dumplings,
A sauce of curdled thoughts and images?

Brute sensation is all that men need, save
Empathy for the girls, that's what women's
Magazines reveal in sex pages sandwiched
Between cookery tips and gardening.

So why then is he still delaying? Ok,
Sweetie, DIY number 69,
Your turn. What have you brought the screwdriver for?

XXX

A Tiny Climb

Above Padley, on that outcrop, both frowning as we looked at the drop and the elephantine-arsed nature of the thing, a little thing clicked in my head. It was a latch, dropping open, and letting memories out. I could do this blindfolded. I was allowed to, if I wanted. So I stepped up on the huge holds that suddenly appeared, and there it was. The top. And you followed, gammy shoulder and all. I wish we had kissed up there. We should have. X

Sweet Madness

Is it sweet madness, being single, or being brimful of desire and love that marks me out? I seem to have an effortless ability to make women smile at me. Their eyes shine. I do not know how I am doing it. Maybe I am like a late rose just coming into bloom before the winter shrivels it. My blood is singing. And although I am ravaged by care, and ravished by you, there must be some mark set upon me - some fruition is taking place, and plain to see by all.

And somehow you gave me that gift. A tree bent so far backwards to accommodate others, I was in danger of toppling. With just a few words, and some simple generous kisses, you straightened me, and somehow I am coming into bloom.

And then later, once we had drunk each other, when our electric senses had short-circuited each other, when your sweat was my sweat, and we hardly knew whose hand was whose, then a calm certainty began to grow in me, a kernel, a core of me in a boiling sea of stress and dizziness.

I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

DXXX

And as for yourself, what do you know?

That you stirred prehistory in your lover?

What passion was it welled from the long-dead

in him? What women were there who hated you?

What men of darkness did you rouse in young veins?

What dead children reached their arms to you?

O, gently, gently then! Let him watch you

at some steady, everyday task - lovingly, lead him

close up to the garden, give him whatever might

outweigh the nights...

Hold him back...

Rainer Maria Rilke, Elegy III - Duino Elegies

Response to previous comment - for want of a more amorous title.

I dare say things would feel better were you to be in my bed, our eye-beams twisted upon a double thread- (Ah ha! I can do poetry allusions too if I dig deep enough!) but I don’t think it would help the cause. 

What fucking cause?

I see spectres of the wronged and righteous bearing over dreams of you, fingers pointing, wagging, whittling their stakes. I hear chiding, chastening, vengeful voices in my head and the distant sounds of Furies unleashing their hell-hounds to find and follow my scent.

But Pah!

All that between remembering with a smile your skin against mine and how easy it was to be with you and simply enjoy.

Aaaargh! 

I don’t know your plans and neither it seems, do you. How can you? It’s just the one-day-at-a-time-one-foot-after-the-other stage and I salute you for bearing up thus far. 

You know there’s no pressure from over here. Whatever whims or wants I might have, I live mostly in my own sweet bubble upon whose filmy (& occasionally filthy) screen your delightful image flickers and shifts.

And as for your freedom, I wouldn’t have it otherwise. I’ve never been one for shackling.

But,  rebound - beware (I shall be). Take your time. Fanny about if you wish. I am not the only goddess in the pantheon nor the only heavenly body to strump about this universe.

I’m going to shut up now because you are talking at me from the wings, which is disconcerting (and also the reason why all the above is really rather crap).

Of course you’re welcome here but I am too loathe to be complicit in your bastardry to encourage it so. So - shrugs - just let me know.

Dear you,

You are very sweet. I’ve said that already.

Today I don’t deserve your words, your enthusiasm nor your love in any of its gentle or violent forms; words meant to arouse and caress wasted on my blunted mind and senses. Yet saved for another day

My body - the lithe, desirous body that intertwined with yours - is but a dead weight and a dull ache and my mind has recoiled and curled in upon itself. I’ve been coaxing then beating it with Virginia Woolf but every time I shut the page, it retreats again and clenches.

For some reason, my head was so wracked with senseless agony last night, I found myself retching painfully over the toilet bowl - something I don’t do lightly. Quite literally, I can’t stomach the bile.

Been here before. Can’t get away from it. Can only sit it out and wait for a brighter hour or a better day.  Head banging only makes bruises. 

The man from the services called at 10 to apologise for the late cancellation of my visit from the social worker who has been recently bereaved. I’m sorry someone had to die for this relief but  knowing I wasn’t to have a concerned and ‘helpful’ stranger intrude today made me the closest to glad I’ve come in the last 2 days.

I’m fighting the urge to shut out the pitiless sun and curl up in my unwashed bed since I’d only remember you there and I don’t want to embitter those pure and lovely hours with this slow dark ooze.

I wish I could say something nice. I wish I could embrace you and let you in. I am annoyed with myself for being so repellant but at least I have insight, tenacity and a degree of intolerance. I expect I will spank myself until the nerve ends wake-up and sting sooner or later. 

I will dig a hole and plant my tree. I’m trying my damndest not to bang my head

Considering what you are facing right now, all the above seems self-indulgent and pathetically pitying. No matter how true - it is.

So sorry for being the slow slug that slips off the petals of your pretty words and into the dirt. Tomorrow I might be a nectar-sipping butterfly.

Don’t let any of this trouble you. It’s certainly none of your doing.