We spoke in tongues that day,
Your fingers trailed my body like
a harlot skimming through the bible finding her daily grace.

The Sun, her majesty, jealous of the
nervous heat that fought for a moment of breath between your satin body and my scarred chest.

Did you know that I almost cried?
Because your touch was everything I feared the most.
Your touch was confidence, maybe love.
It hurt.

We don't speak the same language anymore,
For your fingers,
are too holy for mine.

Let's defy gravity, baby.

Let's defy that *****
until her forceful hands shake us
back to reality.

We'll rise above this dreary world
and play leap frog among the stars.

We'll smoke one with the moon
while he
spills secrets about the Sun.

We'll get drunk off faith
and throw a prayer or two up ahead
for the Man Upstairs.

When the magic fades,
We'll hold one another as the law comes back into effect
and we slowly drift through the clouds
claiming lazily
that the moon prefers Southern Comfort.

I want to be loved for one night,
then I shall be content in isolation,
comfortable in the lack of weight
on the other side of the bed.

One night, to be kissed brand-new
by foreign lips; a familiar fear
as she leaves her dress on the chair,
and our inhibitions on the floor.

Absence of physical touch, heard words;
no tangible proof I exist, or should exist
at all. I miss the fatigue. Brief sensation,
some energy - our collective heat;

the way we sweat beneath the sheets.
The way you need to call out to me.
I have not heard my name in weeks.

I want to be loved for one night,
then I can return to pollute these pages
with something beyond conjecture,
something worth holding on to.

I remember the boy with art in his heart
I was there too
Tucked amongst everything else he loved
We were so young, but he loved me
I remember the pretty words he wrote for me
They felt empty
As I tried to hold them in my mind
He wanted something I didn’t know how to give
So I put his name on my list of failed attempts
And continued along a different road.

I remember the boy with art in his mind
He made passionate sense to me
His beautiful thoughts reflected at me through his eyes
I hear Socratic dialogues read in his voice
And when I listen to music we shared
It’s like he sings to me
Stories of what never was
And what could have been
I remember him telling me I’d always be triumphant in love
Now I laugh
Maybe he didn't know everything after all.

I remember the boy with art on his body
My fingers ghosted over storied skulls and roses and knives
He had suffered for his art
I remember letting him take me in any way he chose
“Gentle, gentle,” I whispered, over and over
But he chose not to hear
Too lost in his selfish pleasure
So I braced myself against the pain
And told myself that it felt good.

But what about the boy with art in his soul?
I imagined that he
Would speak to me in poems
That his laugh would be a song
That he would paint pictures with his caress across the canvas of my skin
For what is love, if not a work of art?

I remember all of the stupid things.
The gap in my first love's fringe
that appeared only when she was flustered,
or torn between *** and G-d.
The nursery teacher who resembled
Jane Goodall and sat with me
whilst my hayfever was too potent
to play out in the sun.

I remember the exuberance of heat
on the concrete slabs in my first back garden.
How my mother would take
boiling water to the empires of ants
that would find life in the cracks
and crevices between my footfalls.
I remember how silent they were
through oppression and death.

I remember my first sight of the ocean.
How serene it looked in the distance,
how unforgiving and cold it was
once I threw my whole weight into it.
The shivering donkeys on the beach,
agitated by the ice-cream crowds;
the man who handled snakes for a living
and persuaded me to touch a killer.

I remember my first guitar
and how I stared at it helplessly
for two hours, like a teenage boy
on his first sight of a ******.
The first sad song to deliver a feeling
never experienced, but communicated;
how adults failed to answer the questions
that music gave forth effortlessly.

I remember when you started leaving
kisses at the end of your messages,
the formulaic gaps in time
before I would hear from you again;
your costume of nonchalance.
The way you appeared in the wasteland hours,
playing the therapist with your kind words
and history of neurosis.

I remember the sheet of plastic
that shielded me from the rain as a child,
the rubber wheels of my carriage
buckling through puddles and gaps;
the first exposure to nature's lullaby,
as I fall asleep through storm and traffic.
I remember how easily sleep once came,
and how I resisted it all the same.

I remember my recurring nightmare.
A big red button and the doors of hell;
some spectre of infinite density
that caterwauled for the destruction
of all things human, all things new.
The way my mother's arms were infallible,
the priest's glare, omniscient;
the revolting concept of a cigarette.

I remember all of the useless things.
The rings around my grandfather's eyes
on the only occasion I saw him cry.
Kissing Rebecca on the lips,
cementing our love with tree sap
and the promise of an endless summer.
I remember the first time I felt sad
without having a reason to be so.

I remember the shine of the room
when I took pills for the first time;
the incorrigible thirst for water
and the racing confessions that followed.
I remember how it felt,
the first time I trapped someone in a poem;
how easy it was to forget them
once reduced to words and half-truths.

When the night comes
so will you.