The Other Hand

    

Maybe these kisses would land, better,
on the other hand,
while you show me the scars where rocks and
landscapes, have scraped
the depths of you? Have been the agony
and life-giving
breath
of you… Softer than silk and roughly
hewn; my under-honoured soldier, and his
every day wounds, of growing,
and living,
recounted –
   
all these marks,
his adventure’s bounty,
and beauty,
beyond measure and doubt – let me cover
each one, with my hungry mouth, and hot gasps,
on skin;
I will exhale fire
and have it sink in, until your soul burns with passion and
grace, each map of past, I want
to trace, with my tender,
smoothing thumb,
   

ahead of sweet lips and caressing tongue; drawing circles
on my favourite part
of you;
the story of your march,
to me, this moment; my fortress of light;
where a quiet warrior
may spend his nights, in arms and
all ecstasies – deeper and deeper, wider than
seas – show his cards and throw defences aside.
For here, the King of Hearts,
need not always
be a knight. 
   

Sunday Morning

     
Pressed against me, in my kitchen
on a Sunday morning;
there is only coffee, and time; no doubt.
Fall on me, come breathe your soul
out; ecstasy out loud,
risen up
and laid down
without the soft-veiled fight,
cried out
in a river
of viscose light
from all our universal stars;
show me,
one by one,
your newest scars - 
tender,
that I have not 
seen;
let me kiss them, accept them,
like they have always been, for you
cannot
ever 
be changed:
your insides
bear
my name,
written through and side to side;
your crimson,
my blue skies,
we are bound by the glorious purple;
a beautiful love
welcome passion-burden, 
raw truth - 
cut me open,
my insides read: one word,
only: you.
     

Where Is Summer?

   
I looked up at the sun today,
and asked him his mind.
He met my eyes.
And sighed.
Then drew the clouds
to hide behind, and went back
    
to his solitude;
unmoved,
he turned his face away, night's cool replacing
heat of a day,
he just could not face.
      
I chased
and challenged him, why he did not shine?
That it cannot be winter
all the time;
there must be warmth and life; his soft caress,
his touch on my skin through a summer dress, his whispered,
golden breath
falling tender
on the back of my neck, 
twisted sheets, beaded sweat, and his
burning
of my soul...
    
He crumpled then and rolled
the clouds
in
thicker, 
blacker,
quicker and quicker; freezing raindrops, began to fall.
    
I looked up
at the sun, a moment,
appalled - and I understood;
      
took down my umbrella
and pushed off my hood; to be willingly cried sodden,
and kissed,
in the ensuing flood; arms open,
without a single
shiver.
    
It was not that he would not try.
    
He would again glint, off the waters of that river,
created and gushing by.
The sun yearned,
for it to be summer,
just, as much as I. 
     

My Favourite Part

     
If I tell you that this
is my favourite part,
know it is because there, I feel your
heart-beat, and your soul
speak to me,
feel you tighten on the edge
of an ecstasy calling;
a dawn, and a sunset,
a sky falling, and the stars bereft now
of a moment
that was written in them,
as it soars to new galaxies, twists
and bends, in trails
of comets,
burning through blackness, on its own
trajectory of dizzying, colourful happiness – this
is the place,
you let me in –the torsion of muscle,
the softness of skin,
on skin,
and I feel your lips curve,
without ever needing to hear a word or a sigh,
out loud,
here we are lost, beyond the
clouds of Heaven, where tender passion calls;
roars, and begs the rush
of a waterfall of light; a glistening ribbon
that curls and binds
you inside me,
and I
in you…hot mouth, caressing too
deep
to miss, as I bury my face, in my favourite part
of you , to kiss. 

Details

    
The devil
is in the details though, you see,
the dove-tails, and the ways
you are
with me, locked together, like strange-cut keys, and turning,
as a puzzle -
a monkey tree;

tangled, entwined,
and holding vines – I am yours and you
are…mine and borrowed,
this, I know,
details…details etched in sand
beneath my toes, hidden with care
and warmed by sun,
washed by rain, those details come
again to haunt us,
time against time: ‘what’
and ‘when’, and I push them aside: three from ten blackbirds
baked in a pie -
they sing the truth of our star-bitten sky,

and it matters not,
the ‘if’ or ‘why’,
so long as I smile
and I look
in your eyes.

     

The Passion

    
Here's a long story,
a glorious rapture descending - 
vines creeping, into veins and blood,
foliate bosses and hood-moulds 
crenellating,
the doors to Narnia's portal. They left my finger
hopelessly trailing,
over,
time
immortal. The long shadow of a broken sceptre,
ground beneath:
the bone collector, shaft of dust,
through long windows thrown
lighting wildflowers impossibly grown from the
ruins of matins,
prime and nones, 
a mystery extant speaks of all
that is gone in the wind,
the rain:
in the unholy fires,
the crashing down of celestories and 
spires, and I wandered amongst them; their gritty texture,
whispering of lauds,
compline and vespers, a scratch in
the buttress, striking the time: eyes to heaven and glitter
falls down my spine, still, and the doves that call,
from the remnant of a crossing,
emboss my heart and spread wings in my chest - 
where once the vestments 
were plain,
I see a myriad of colours overlain:
as a pale hand in a silken glove.
And it was here, I recall, my head began to spin with it.
It was here
I fell 
in love. 
  

Inspiration

   
(Poetry challenge by The Leeds Savage Club - includes or inspired by music or lyrics)

Moments of melting, fingers in dirt,
sky-rolls, and breaths, and meeting
of the first days of summer, 
in wet-heat and 
joy: every little thing
is gonna be
alright.
    
You-thirst, and light bursts,
behind
silent nights. Stars and sun-kisses and 
gentle moonlight sands,
with fire
on the rocks: I'm gonna be 
where the lights
are shining on me.
    
Hoof-prints in the wind, and
smeared in dust,
laughter and tomorrow's
day-old rust of decision,
and trusting knowledge
of past;
lean on me,
when you
are not strong.
    
Hold on,
and coffee
on a Saturday morning, cliff-tops
and slow afternoons of dawning 
truth that shapes clouds
and holds hands at canter;
just be mine,
be mine.
    
Rum and ice-rocks, and the 
edges of never, the drumbeats of 
hearts
on the verge of 
forever-remember as 
night calls them home, 
without thinking:
I walk the line. 
    
I follow its thread
to wherever the bread
crumbs and candy 
shall snake and lead; an inky-pink seahorse,
Pegasus,
a unicorn,
and me. All follow the rainbow;
for there ain't
no sunshine
when she's gone,
and I guess 
you'd say
we were mind-dancing all along. 
   

Full Circle

   
"All in time," said a whispering wind, as it
passed me by on a length of
gold string, floating, beyond a morning's slow rise...
"...all at the twist and the turn
of a tide, where the demons will fear to go."
  
Hot sunlight through glass
cast an exquisite glow, on the cobwebs
where they tangled,
as flies, and they could not follow,
and all at once, I saw tomorrow in the mirror
of eyes, and sweet tinges of rust,
  
and all the stars gathered
amongst white, swirling dust, to etch with a finger,
silver doves,
and the touch of a hand
was surely enough, to send me crashing
to my childhood's knees;
  
I was covered in ivy-shade
and honeybees, as I wiped away a world
I had known: I surrender all the days of a life untold,
to most, but the cherished, unknown,
  
and standing in the safest of circles,
I confess,
right or wrong, I am home.
   

The Story

    
Here is, I suppose, a very long story,
though the chapters last 
mostly nights,
and mornings, and if you read the pages 
all crumpled together,
many years go by, a fable of forever...I was never
without you, my soul never separate,
my spirit never
less
temperate than it is 
in this tale, and your arms;
a soul-doctor takes oath
to do no harm and I see none, where the world
would see much - nothing wrong with this 
moonlight-touch and the magic that follows us
still,
stolen, silent; not a will, but a must and a need 
indulged,
red letters all divulged on a scrap quickly thrown
in the flames...
come...I'll make you, forget your name, again, with 
this breath on your skin...
here is a long story, that you and I,
over and over,
begin.
  

Strange Tale

   
You could call it a strange tale,
wherever you came from, for it seemed I turned
around one day to
the sound of a distant song that you were singing
on a tree branch
somewhere high, and all at once
I could see nothing
but
the colour
of the sky when my eyes first found you,
and the deeper soul of yours; hear nothing but my beauty
where once were only flaws and cracks so many, time fell still and lost,
so great had been my sacrifice,
the giving and the cost of what had gone before,
the things I'd let them take,
so deep had been my Excalibur at the bottom of a
haunted lake, that I was certain,
such strength would never return,
but fingers interlaced with yours, to smoulder and
to burn became my natural state:
my morning and my night,
your tiger to my lioness, flames licked beneath
moonlight reflecting
on the sea,
all full where once was void, to leap at stars
and then be free in waves and foam,
in ecstasy and joy.
   
And then to scratch, upon the rocks
and bleed, you made me show you,
my every wound
and mark,
and told me amidst my shame, they were
amour pieces of courage
that
not ever had been scars:
and you stopped my heart and pointed,
how dark the sky had grown above,
and reached into the lake with
a fist of iron love - you drew out Excalibur,
and handed him to me;
'I never saw
a knight more worthy,'
you whispered
on the breeze.
    

Burning

   
A flame inside her,
and a light, like mine, with her arms around his
neck, and her world 
in his eyes that see nothing, but the way that
she winds,
hips, like a serpent, as she twists 
and grinds to
a beat, that only they feel, 
deeper than one,
that rises
through the steel, of the table legs
beneath my soft glow,
something that pulls them as they ebb
and flow, again, the way I've watched them do,
in their moment together,
just you, you...lost in music, not around 
but within, an all-consuming,
intoxicating thing, that fills
this whole place, with their heat,
vibrations like thunder and the strike of her feet,
dancing,
as I do, in a door-draft,
foreheads together 
they smile and laugh like they don't
have a care or a bother,
nothing beyond 
the euphoria of one another,
nothing past
secret touches of skin, fitting 
together, as a queen
and a king who seems
the sun,
and her moon,
nothing else...just you, you...and they shine,
like a million stars,
a succubus fairy and the pirate,
of her heart,
rocking to crescendo 
on their waves, in the dark,
they light up the night and oblivious, the bar...melting, burning
like we do;
a candle in a jar.