Monstrous, perching
Lurching
Between-icon-between
City Fiend
Money slips from sweating fists
He lists
Elitist
(He's ******)
Taking, Faking
Raging, Breaking
Monstrous, perching
City Fiend.

She is five, and her heart is an ocean
Into which I plunge, warm at first, tickled by the sun,
Then cooling; her questions surge, and surf,
Here is a storm; steady, little sea-sprite,
Let me guide you o'er the raging waves.

What can I teach her, my elf-child, sweet fay?
There will be dreams; follow them,
Some will come true; more, if you believe, if you are brave.
Each of our hearts are an ocean full of dreams,
Find fisher-folk, patient, gentle, strong.

Love them with your whole heart,
As though you can save the world by loving.
Your love is a prize that the rarest will win;
Gift it to these, the ones who take your dreams and hold them,
Ever precious, as their own.

'I love you' means more than itself, it means nothing, and everything. It means that I cannot now live without your voice in my head and my heart, whispered softly in early morning, lucid dreams in which your skin finds mine and we are suffused with warmth and a gentle, deep arousal that is beyond everything; utter rapture.

It means that you have infiltrated desires and abilities that I have always had and never known, and gifted them to me with a deft flourish and a heartstopping smile, halting me in my tracks, making me aware of myself and of you and the myriad possibilities that are all caught up in us.

I tell you in the spaces between these words that you are my dearest friend and only love, that I do not exist in any real way without you; you make me true.

'I love you' cannot mean these things, and yet it means all of them, and everything, and nothing, and when I say it to you I hope that you will hear the catch in my throat as the words fall into your waiting hands, my gift, all and everything I have; now yours.

Never think of me with regret
We will leave unspoken that connection
And remain as we were,
Barely even friends.
Why am I so sad?
I have lost, really, so very little
We were never close
I was too afraid to examine the reasons why.
I would love to claim you as my friend
To tell you now, how you delight me
How the twist of your smile
Makes my insides spin
How I want to move against you
And feel your hands press
Around the curve of my spine.
But these are not the thoughts of a friend
We are not, and never will be
Anything of the sort.
What will we be?
Please, not awkward strangers
Regretting a night I would rather relive.

I wanted to be your lover,
And I still do.
You will be my dream lover, forever.
I have no choice, and neither do you,
Neither of us can escape my dreams.
I think you ought to know,
There aren't just pictures in my head,
There are words, too.
All the messages you ever sent me,
Playing over and over again, on repeat.
That's why I can't recover,
That's why I can't let you go.
You are eternally perfect, saying and doing and writing
All the right things.
I need you back in my life, flawed and deficient,
And then I'll want you in a different way,
One that will be easier to quash.

Hush, lover,
The moon is a still and silent icicle,
Blurred by clouds that glow and gasp,
The wind; it wants them gone.

Lover, hush,
Midnight will always, ever be blue
And you, dream lover, sweet and sure,
Will always chase the dawn.

Love, hush, hush,
The moon is a still and silent icicle
But we are not cold
Wrapped as we are, in each other, in our love.

Hush, love, hush,
I want you not as I want the coming summer,
With a longing for heat,
'Tis Winter Midnight-Wanting warms our blood.

She said we were wired
But we hadn't had much coffee
I was wired to you.
The still smarting
Electric tang
Of your lips against mine
The unfamiliar burn of whisky
And the hot, metallic burn of
sparks between us.
How could they not see?
I know how...
If this were reversed
I couldn't conceive of such betrayal
Yet, being on the other side
I see things aren't so clear.
However much I want you
I want to mend things more
I will cut the connection
Leave me drowning in the dark.

We can be lovers
Or strangers
Never again can we be at peace together
in each others company.
I miss resting my head on your shoulder
No awareness of the heat between our bodies.
I miss when you and I meant less,
Meaning more.
It seemed so unimportant, what we had
But now I mourn for when I could be with you in a room
And not yearn to move closer.
We were so careless with our calm moments
Never suspecting that everything could change
And suddenly, the charged air between us
Makes it difficult to breathe.
Breathe with me.
Breathe life back into what we have lost.
We'll starve these other thoughts of air
And let them die.

Are you so unused to the way love tastes
That you smother it in salt?

Keep your bitterness to sharpen your palate,
Your senses are dulled, and your flavours uninspired.

Feed, then, on that which makes you salivate
You lust only for that which you have lost.

I will no longer feed you pity.
I am too busy feasting, partaking of joy.

With these words, I find him in my head
They are my salvation.
When I need to find a way to him, I write instead
He is my creation.
Please don't leave me, hungry words
My appetite, not met, at bay,
Without you, there are pictures in my head
I won't turn them to words
They need to stay unsaid.

The theme for this year
Is betrayal
Both delivered and received.
I have yet to decide
If I am made stronger
Or more fragile
By experiencing both.
I am certainly
A great deal sadder
And a lot more careful
About who I trust
Including myself.

Your silence
Moves me in ways your words never did
Your silence
Destroys my speech
Paralyses my thoughts
Provokes my tears
Undoes me.

As the days unfold
I forget how we sounded
Your silence
Dements me
Your silence
Makes me question
Makes me wallow in despair.

I make hasty decisions
Say things I shouldn’t
Your silence unwomans me
Makes me violent, makes me rage

You brought me here
Against all reason
Wore me down
Dangled me on a string
Until I broke
And now you abandon me
Silence engulfs me

Far away, where you are
Do you imagine me silent
Or are you clapping your hands over your ears
To block out my screams?

Savouring the wait,
Laying out the bait,
Listening,
Glistening.

Groan escapes your lips,
Slight shiver of hips,
I know
You grow.

Finally, I feel your touch
Subtle pressures, not too much,
We'll play
Your way.

Hands upon me, with insistence,
Growing rough, meet no resistance,
Capture
Rapture.

You hold my heart, in those large, surprisingly delicate, dextrous hands. Your twisted little fingers, the ones I stroked and kissed only yesterday, move against my beating heart as they reach for me through restless dreams. Are you dreaming? I exist now, only in your dreams. If you do not dream, I cease to be. You promised to devour me; you did. I danced on your warm, rough tongue. You taste me still. I will change the story that your senses tell, I will alter all remembrance and anticipation. I become you; then, now and evermore.  

‘I miss you’ is a paltry phrase, inadequately addressing the way my heart has moved into my throat and is trying to escape. I search for you, in the city you have departed. The city calls you back; it wants you here, and so do I. You perfectly fit this imperfect paradise. I cannot absorb your departure, you are still here, burned into the tips of my fingers, pressed into the skin of my lips. Your thigh rests under the palm of my hand. Your voice echoes at the centre of me. I hold you within. If I reach inside, I can bring you from me, to me. My need for you can make this happen. My longing for you is all that there is.

Why don't you want to read my poems?
Don't you understand
That you are disregarding
My very heart?

Why won't you let me
Show you my heart?

Do you know how it feels
To have offered you my hopeful little heart
And to meet with such indifference?
Outright rejection would have hurt a lot less.
It's as if I had called your attention to a funny skit on YouTube,
Or a bargain on HotUkDeals.

You would be more excited by either, I think.
That makes me want to curl into a ball
And cry.
It makes me want to die.

You are always inside me.

We are never

Together.

I am ever beside myself.

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.

You touch me,
As if you can't believe that I am real,
The wonder in your eyes,
Betrays all that you feel,
All that you want, and need,
You gaze on me,
As if you could feed
On what your eyes find,
As if you could live on our love,
As if, withdrawn from my presence,
You might wither, and die.
Know this, then, love,
Without your touch,
My skin would turn to stone,
Our love sustains me,
I am not alone.
Under your gaze, I grow, I breathe, I live,
So touch, and gaze, take what you need,
And all that I can give.