A lifetime ago
On a mountain covered with snow
An empty ski-lift swinging overhead
He deflowered her.
The crazy pumping of their hips
Synchronized to the clanking of the empty chairs,
Around, around, around again,
Slot machines pumping
diamonds and aces and crowns, three in a row, jackpot,
Hearts bursting, snow gathering, pooling, cooling warm places
Undetected, overtaken by other sensation
Processing, processing everything felt
Blood mingled with melted snow
On a mountain
A lifetime ago.

I want to give you
A piece of me.
What would you like?
I want you to choose.

My eyes...?
No, too deficient, insufficient
And unseeing
With a tendency, recently, to flood.

My fingers...?
Tremblers now, them.
And the nails are bitten ragged, ******.
I push my rings to my knuckles,
And bend, and flex the joints,
Deliberately creating callouses, enjoying the pain.
You don't want these masochistic digits.

My arrhythmic, angry heart?
I think not,
You've rejected that, already,
And I'm not prepared to offer it again,
Get away, that won't be yours,
Cast your greedy glance elsewhere...

And so, we're back to what you wanted all along.
Go ahead, take it,
The part you wanted, longer for, risked
your world, and mine, for.
I hope it's worth it,
But I think
It would have been a better prize
Along with all the rest.

Disobey them.
Keep your secret place, behind the stairs,
Make sure you hide there, at lunchtime
They will never find you.
Take a book
You will remember these moments, far into the future
The teachers and your parents are all wrong
You do not need the others
They will only cause you pain.

In a little while
Your purse will be stolen
And the £5 you needed to buy a mother's day present, will be gone.
A kindly caretaker will lend you the money,
You'll agree to pay it back, £1 per week.
Don't go back on your promise.
Don't hide from him, so you can keep your pennies.
He will die, unexpectedly of a heart attack
You will sing 'Pie Jesu' for him, in front of the whole school
Knowing you still owed so much
Never able to pay it back.

Never get the 370 bus.
One day, a group will surround you there while waiting,
And cover you with spit.
They'll twist your arms behind your back
Burn you with cigarettes,
And send you fleeing back to school
Crying, with phlegm-flecked spittle in your hair.
You will never get over it
So always walk a half mile further
And take the other bus.

And finally,
This will all be over sooner than you think
The supposed best days of your life, your living hell.
One day you will be beautiful,
Really beautiful
You will have beautiful, dramatic dilemmas
You'll dance and laugh and have so many friends
(When it's your TIME to have friends
Not when told to find some)
You are beautiful now,
But no-one else can see.
Soon, soon sweet girl, they'll see
Stay strong, get through it
I promise it gets better.

Let me trace an arc of longing on the softest, sweetest parts of you.
Make the sounds that I will replay
Over and over again, every time I am alone.

Build a circle of seduction
With whispered explicits, your tongue, and your arms.
Let me climb inside.

Pull me closer.
Place your hands behind my knees,
And slowly, firmly, raise them higher.
Make me tremble,
I'm on fire.

Sweep my dress from my shoulders,
Let your fingers find
Bullet-*******,
Squeeze, tease, grind.

I will get down on my knees and beg,
I always will.

I will get down on my knees
Strategically,
Knowing what you want from me.

Make me helpless
And laugh, softly, at my complete
Exposure.

Tell me what to do, everything you want,
I will comply.
Free me from myself,
Enslave me to your will,
Make me cry.

Give me what I want.
Give me what you want,
Oh, please,
Tease, tease.

I did not choose to love you.

I am never sure of anything.
I have questioned and agonized, second guessed
Every aspect of my life
For thirty seven years.
And now I am sure of something
It is an impossible thing
And it shreds me, from within.

We do not choose who we love.

Everything I ever believed
Was a misunderstanding of the true nature
Of all that we aspire to.
Thirty seven years
And I knew nothing.
I am on autopilot, every atom reaching out
Every thirsty cell screaming for a drink of you.

I think you love me, too.

It will not be enough, it will never be enough.
Like that first time ******* high
We seek again, and again, and again.

Each day we die a little
More, more, more.
We crave, we rage, we cannot disengage.

This febrile fever betrays our terminal condition.
The world has caught something
For which there is no cure.

I wish you were here
And could hold me.
I expect that you have big, strong arms,
And would make me feel
Safe, warm, blissfully buried.
I bet being held by you
Would feel like hibernation,
Like shutting out the cold, cruel world.
I wish you were here
And could hold me,
I'll wish it for a little while longer,
Until I fall asleep.

My friend, she's watching you,
Stalking you, claws extended, fangs exposed,
Waiting for a chance to swoop
And dismember,
Waiting for a time to ****.

My friend, she's watching out for me
Because I can't.
She is my tigress, pacing on bloodied paws
Living for the moment she can pause, frozen
And leap, finishing you forever.

You do not stand a chance.

There is no room for delicious
For hungry, naked glances
And sips of you and whisky at the bar.

No place for fevered kisses
Lost in you, then coming to,
Colliding in a cab home.
To them, unsuspecting,
We are demons.

There is no way to justify these acts
Except the warm, sweet smell of you
Fading from my skin
Unspoken, welcome new sensations
All consuming
Oh so sweet.

Your honey dripping tongue
Lies and captivates with promises
you have broken before you even make them.
I think about taking a knife and severing,
Denying us both everything once promised.
Then I remember...
How you can make me glow with a single sensual phrase
and how your tongue tastes against mine.
I would not deny the world
The beauty of your words, false as they are,
And I won't destroy the memory of that perfect kiss.
Kiss me again
Or I might die,
Kiss me again,
And tell another lie.

Just sadness, is all there is and a pain in between my throat and my chest and an anger with myself and a sadness, such a sadness that I do not want to eat and I do not want to sleep and I do not want to love. I only want to love. I do not want to hate. I only want to love. I do not want to love.

I only want to love.

Things are getting harder
And I cannot carry on
Burdened with these butterflies
That just won't die.
I am a specimen in a jar
Observed by a curious self.
I flutter to the top, to an airhole,
One delicious gasp,
And then I fall back, waiting
For the strength to rise again.
Forgive me,
I am new to myself and only want release
Perhaps I need to be restrained,
To ever find some peace.

I've more curves than are fashionable,
And I love every single succulent contour.
'Pin-up petite' I like to call it,
A considerable ***** and bottom, fifties style,
Not the angled, jutting hipbone sleekness
That is so coveted, and Kate Moss-esque.
I like breaking the mould,
And dress to suit my out of era shape
In wiggle dresses, flouncy skirts, petticoats,
Red, and bold, and look-at-me,
Black hair, red lips, a look twice smile,
That's my style.

I yearn for your strength
Your fortitude
Whispered words
As you slide inside
My heart.

I won't spill a single drop of us
Until you place a new page, here
And urge me to erupt.

In my dreams
Real, imagined, urgent
How I yearn
Silently
I burn.

I yearn for your strength
Hold me, heal me, lift me up
Slide inside
My heart.

If I could kiss you now,
I might end up biting your lip until I drew blood.

You might get your *****,
But I could not promise to sheath my claws.

You don't stop being a child, and become an adult, all at once.
Remember the endless reservoir of energy you had?
It slowly becomes purpose, ambition, goals.
Limited, channelled, tunnelled, controlled.
Optimism leaks away, you learn restraint, you learn to be guarded.
You realise that to be otherwise, leaves you vulnerable,
That others can, and will, hurt you.
It can take decades to learn all these lessons,
You still assume that everyone will act like you, think like you,
You're floored by betrayal, again and again.
If you're lucky, you'll retain some childhood naïveté, some trust,
And circumvent cynicism, which is the death of freedom, and hope.
If it has found you, you must try to travel back to your childlike heart,
Everyone's map is different,
So I cannot show you the way.

I have been in an almost sleep all day,
Perpetual semi-twilight.
Each time I surfaced
I popped another pill (on an empty, aching stomach)
And returned to not quite dreams
It was almost fun.

The moment when the little pill kicks in
Is all the relief you've ever felt.
Pain, the master of your world
Recedes
And febrile fantasies erupt
Spilling from your head, to your bed.

I don't think I want to get well.
I thought the most fantastic poem,
But I couldn't break the surface
For long enough to capture it.
It eludes me now, while lucid,
But the pain is creeping back...
So, time for a little white saviour,
Perhaps I will rediscover
My lost masterpiece.,
Buried in the desert of disease.

I shouldn't have gone out walking, alone,
Tonight of all nights, I should have stayed away.
There is an abyss here, a perverted tear in the earth,
Trickling with the waters of Lethe,
Alive with the shades of the dead.
And here they are;
Dead things are coming, with their eyes like soured, milky rubies.
The smell of hunger is red,
And that is what I can smell,
Their starvation, their need,
They no longer breathe, or bleed,
But they can hunger, and they do,
And they smell me; something new,
A clean soul ripe for corruption.
Hungrily they come, tendons trailing, mouths agape,
Here is our vision; here is the shape
Of the dead world that will be.
They will take us, in our billions,
But tonight, they'll just take me.

So, I started listening to Johnny Cash,
And yes, it hurt, why do we feed our pain with music?
Why do we do that? It isn't enough to just feel pain,
We have to feeeeeed it,
Bit of Jeff Buckley, no Hallelujah moment for me though,
Just salt tears and - hello (is there anybody in there?)
I've found my way to Floyd,
I wish I was ******* numb,
I haven't been comfortable for a long, long time.
Welcome, Radiohead, because I need to know that I'm a creep,
I really need to wallow in my weirdness.
Hell, let's have some Smashing Pumpkins while we're at it,
I'm ready for some Billy Corgan angsty rants.
Yes I'm your zero, The world is a ******* vampire and
despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage
You tell 'em Billy, hey, let's move on to Nine Inch Nails
Because there's something I can never have
My whole existence is flawed.

My heart is a honeycomb
Riddled with many small spaces,
Each one a placeholder
For pieces I gifted to you.
I remember each moment of gifting.
The first; your birthday party,
You walked me to the bar and gazed on me with wonder
Before revealing more than you should, frankly and without fear
or expectation.
Later that night,
You slipped your hand illicitly into the warm space just above my knees
And breathed a longing sigh.
I took your hand away and held it in my own,
Closing your fingers around the first piece of my heart.
The first time we kissed, I had hidden another piece under my tongue
And it melted into yours.
When you told me I was beautiful
And proved that you really thought so,
You found a piece in what you gazed upon
And it burned itself onto your retinas, indelible - my hearts branding.
There were many other offerings,
And by the time it all collapsed around us,
My heart was barely able to sustain me,
I had offered almost all I could,
The final offering would have destroyed me.
I suppose I should be glad I never had to make it,
But I am a poor version of myself now;
A heart riddled with holes,
And nothing to show for all that I gave up.
You have so much of my heart, with you
I wonder if you feel it beating?
I wonder, if each little piece,
Now bleeding, and yearning to return,
Shares that yearning with you?
Is your heart bleeding, in sympathy, too?

The secret to a happy marriage
Is

The secretions of a happy marriage
Are

The secretary
is
The secret in my marriage.