I want the poetry to mean something tonight,
              as I pace in my bedroom for hours
                                      under jaundiced fluorescent light.

                     I want to write something profound and true,
something of solvence to rid the demons to which I'm glued.

When you lay down
In a swamp disguised as a queen-sized bed
Everything is magnified, and mystified
Dreams stray every which way from here
In these broken and calloused lives
We take devils as wives, and use glances as knives
Turning our heads to needless massacres

When the lights grow dim
We find blood in the wishing well
Every savior is synthesized, and desensitized
A fleeting infancy in exchange for plodding demise
It's time to deny captors pleasure from pain
Because blood rusts chains, and covers us in rain
No longer bound by the rules of the world

We didn’t make a move for at least
fifteen minutes
an hour
a lifetime.
Except for the blood in our veins.
The blood in our veins moved fiercely
throughout our bodies
Like each heartbeat could be the last beat.
Like we could die in our sleep tonight
If we could only sleep tonight.

Our hearts thumping
Our bodies throbbing
Waves and waves of magnetic energy
Surging through us
Into the springs of the mattress
beneath us.
Deep into the wells of our longing
Connecting me to her.
Me beneath her

Our breathing slowed
Then deepened.
She made the first leap.
A leap?
An inch
A micro-movement.

Suddenly
She twisted
in such a way that her hand gently landed
next to mine.
Finally,
Her skin on mine.

I can see the colours now
Of the electricity rushing through our bodies
Swelling
And filling the room.
The mattress could have lifted off the cool ground that night
And taken flight
Soaring through the roof
Erupting through the ozone layer
And flooding the night sky.

As he slept beside me,
Sharing a bed that was not ours
I traced my fingers across his frame
Gently brushing the skin
Covering the bones
That held him together
So I could remember
How we used to lay
That way.
©