Across the aisle you write your vows
To David or Richard or Steve
As your full lips form around my name -
I’ll hold you forever in mind.
Goodbye face and hair and eyes
Unobservant of my longing.
Let me in – uninitiated and weak.
Nourish me with your powerful words,
Soft on my skin like a nymph’s breath.
Envelop me in your robes and offer me
Confession. Make me believe.
My little monk, why quiver and
Twitch at my strong-soft caresses?
I pass my love through my fingers
And pull back your hood to see your
Blessing. Shower me with kisses
Unbidden by taboo as life
Spills from us, wasted on the sand.

Stood by the subway, I see in your eyes
A flickering flame of desire;
A burning passion needing a kindling “yes”
Yet I let it turn to cinders
To feel the cold I deserved.

Now?
Bathe me in flames!
Char my flesh with kisses
And burn away my idiocy.

But another has re-lit the fire.
Tended it. Stoked it.
Kept it burning through dark nights.
While I look through cold-mist eyes
And cradle my burnt fingers.

Remember that suit at the wedding?
I breathed in hard as the clasp shut tight
Corsetting me to shallow breaths
And a constant tension of stomach muscles
Awaiting a punch.
You were my waistband
I outgrew and, out of desire
For better days, kept.
I forced myself into your love
And although having no feeling,
Comfort was in constriction.
And then you broke
As the seat of your love
Tore asunder and I
Was cold.

In a book of faces, yours picks me out.
Your eyes pierce the screen
Detached from me like your heart.
The daggers tear through my chest
And cut me up. Knot my stomach
And tie me down for I’m still free

To love a memory. I am free
As his arm reaches out
From around your neck. Stomach
Twists as you paint the screen
With the contents of my chest
And the beatings of my heart.

You still live in my heart,
Beyond eviction, rent-free.
Your playground is my chest
And, like the slide you’ve grown out,
It is hidden behind a tasteful screen
Of ivy and moss. My stomach

An over-grown garden. I cannot stomach
How you wipe your feet on my heart
By appearing on my screen –
An act entirely free
Of your will – with-out
The pain of us on your chest.

Lock my disappointment in my chest
And deposit the keys in my stomach
For them not to pass-out
Until you have left my heart
Free.
Free of the affects of this screen.

My mind is burnt by the screen,
My heart rages in my chest
And I **** you within my ribs. Free?
I’d rather you’d knot my stomach
And let my heart
Bleed out.

But I must get out
Break the shackles of your making
And be free.

Can you sleep as the sound hits your ears
One at a time from this broken hill?
I mumble my fears down into the valley
As prayer-laden clouds echo my voice,
Sending a sorry shower of words
And a flash of anger.

Clouds part.
Your answer bathes my sky
In clear shades of blue
As my heart rumbles in the distance.

Can you sleep as rain kisses your eyes
One at a time from this broken hill?
A humble God’s dreams run over the gutters
Of nectar-sodden robes sullied by hope,
Ending in rivers running with faith
And flashes of futures.

You split your lips against my face
And morning shatters about our heads
And broke the silence with your breath.
We hang the floating shards from words –
Unclean, unkempt, unformed –
As the shadow of a sparrow crosses our eyes
And joins our cracking voices in song.

The linens smile in wrinkled grace
Like kindly elders above a child
Guiding the naïve to their fate.
Your hair glides calmly past sun beams –
Unsoiled, unspoiled, uncut –
When your laughter at my longing slices the air
And shakes my ego clean from me.

Like the haunting sustain of a dirging Marseillaise,
Your voice rings out, sweet and sinister,
And time slows before the unrequited.
A Goddess – omnipresent & surrounded by a halo
Of blonde hair flying in drunken celebration
– Lacking in omniscience as my secret sin
Stays hidden within confession. This beating
Of xylophonic ribs must be muffled by
Fetid fat from failing flesh
Whilst your light bellows in deafening tones
– A sustaining beauty untamed by man
– Outshining nursery rhymes in this chest
And limericks in the soul.
You smile.
You listen.
I grow and pursue your Liberté
And, in the spirit of Égalité,
Form the ultimate Fraternité:
Ou la petit mort.