I loved too much
who has yet to love me.

I loved too little
the one that always did.

And I do not know
what aches more -
that I have fragments
for a heart
or that I broke
another soul?

When we are making love -
mouth, breast, chest and sweat
genitals joined in circles and loops
of whole bodies - curlicues

coming together, joining
land edge and sea rush
tidal, our vast ocean.

After, we drift away in our minds
our flesh still held hostage
still, our bodies linger close

until the whole earth is silent
and we quietly release each other
becoming two selves, flat on the sheet

skin, side by side beating with heat
sharp and tingling
with the taste of salt.

Lady Macbeth washed her hands
cleaner than Pontius Pilate
with a new improved, bio-enzyme
oxy-bursting, 99.9% germ-scouring
recommended by dermato-logists
scented with rose attar
oils from Arabia
and spermaceti soothing
unguents from long dead whales.

She’s going to the nail bar
for a manicure and application
of semi-permanent, diamond-
tipped, acrylic base-coated
in red blood enamel.

She’ll scratch
and etch rich tattoos
on her husband’s back
with every ******, he will shudder
with pain and delight
He’ll soon forget long, dark nights
bewitched by ghosts and ambition.

© M.L. Emmett

One spoke: "Come, let us gaily go
With laughter, love and lust,
Since in a century or so
We'll all be boneyard dust.
When unborn shadows hold the screen,
(Our betters, I'll allow)
'Twill be as if we'd never been,
A hundred years from now.

When we have played life's lively game
Right royally we'll rot,
And not a soul will care a ****
The why or how we fought;
To grub for gold or grab for fame
Or raise a holy row,
It will be all the ****** same
A hundred years from now."

Said I: "Look! I have built a tower
Upon you lonely hill,
Designed to be a daughter's dower,
Yet when my heart is still,
The stone I set with ***** hand
And salty sweat of brow,
A record of my strength will sand
A hundred years from now.

"There's nothing lost and nothing vain
In all this world so wide;
The ocean hoards each drop of rain
To swell its sweeping tide;
The desert seeks each grain of sand
It's empire to endow,
And we a bright brave world have planned
A hundred years from now.

And all we are and all we do
Will bring that world to be;
Our strain and pain let us not rue,
Though other eyes shall see;
For other hearts will bravely beat
And lips will sing of how
We strove to make life sane and sweet
A hundred years from now.

I was always convinced you could feel me
We were of the moon and of the tides
(But) too stubborn to attempt another ride

I wanted you to know everything
in my eyes.
The truth
when I deliberately told you lies
and the expense of a life in a heart before it dies.

You would be gone too soon
All of this and heaven too
I would wander, I will roam
I will find decadence in alone.
I would dream, I will achieve
Everything only after you leave

You are the anchor chained to my throat,
You are the sand in a shallow moat.
You are the power in my stare,
You are the guilt after an innocent dare.
You are the face in the shadows on the wall
You are the fear in the Devil's call

The invitation to come in
Join a game you cannot win.
But I play, but I play
And forgive the day
Forgive and move away
The state lines you will cross
To lasso me in, refuse your loss
Of my heart, of my head

Your place in the poems I have read