Like cats
we move as shadows,

rubbing past ankles
down sandstone walkways with yellow windows
spilling out into the night like running yolks

sand on your tongue and in my eyes
where you kissed them pink and sore

shadows
              brushing my sides
hissing in the human ants' nest.

If we make it,
through the dark
we'll retreat into sheets
they'll curl around our bones
like milk

I have eyes of glass, you say,
Like a Victorian stuffed animal.

Your eyes betray your anguish
Strained or swimming.

Carnal snarl
Canines for ripping

Curiosity killed the cat,
How evading and paradoxical
When it is plain we are animal,
Grappling bodies.

When your eyes swim with pain and confusion
Regularly and sporadically
I am left at sea, afraid of water
Seaweed choking despair,
You are too busy drowning
To hold my hand

I am but fingertips
Sliding under

Drowned

Biting your flesh in the darkness
How it yields

I am primal
Downwind from you
I am longing

'Us' is just a whisper, thick with liquor

But I have heard the note in your laugh,
That comes too easy

Clinging, lingering like lucid cigarette smoke
My dilemma

- For I cannot discern,
Who the fool is
You or I?

stop
searching
for salvation in another
'human compassion'
we don't talk about that here

your face is a stamp
I will lick and arrange

then

with blank eyes,
I'll evaluate and
compress you
into a fraction
naturally,
an assessment of
your worth as a person

I'll  close these eyes
[in physical pleasure]
and with no further hesitation
sink pointed teeth
into your bared neck

gentle lamb, good
you are a lamb succumbing
nature has undone the dreamers [with physical sensation]

your fleece crusted with filth
and Oroonoko burns

'corruption is a concept
foreign to good peoples'

rubbing mud into your eyes
won't purify your sight
indoctrination into idealism
leads the lambs to fall

I asked you to bite me, and you did
Long and hard, leaving tiny little
Purple teeth marks

Warm bodies and hot blood tide us over
I'm beginning to realise, this state's permanence
And how we can still go on

I asked you to bite me,
Sink your teeth, drink up.

I want you to hurt me,
Now. Rip me apart,
So that there's no chance.

But, I'm afraid,
Even pain subsides
Into numbness these days

Laughing,
Slow dancing
In bedrooms*

Problems drain away
Like kettle- water down the sink
From our last cups of tea

The smell on your neck
Our jokes and gestures
Like rituals

Teases of where, one day
We might end up.

We could be, on the sea
With the breeze buffeting our faces,
Making violent sails on blue-grey skies

There, you'd stand -
A silhouette on the deck
[Salt-wood & peeling paint]
- Absent minded.
Not understanding
How much
These moments

mean

to me.

Out on the sea
There's nothing but us
Laughing,
Slow dancing