I reach for you in the dark
The sheet is cold
My side is warm
Amidst star-shine through
The curtain, a light
Which only illuminates
The sparkle of my tears

You rambler, brier bush, spreading outward
Seeking to entangle my leg in a thorny grasp.
To your pleasure, you try reaching wide crossing a thigh.

What sick joy is held at the sight of tiny red dots of blood
Which sting up and down my limbs?
Yet, I have the last word, so to speak, as I reach.

Gingerly, deftly, reaching in I get what I seek
Then let your purple blood run down my mouth!

When I was a child thistles grew in the countryside
And we both ran wild across the green
Me on legs, it sends out seeds and systems of roots
Yes, the thistle intrigues me with its stately air, and

Even as a child, I would lie nearby to study it;
It with its bold, untouchable beauty standing
On hollow strong stem holding its pink head proudly
I had not realized it was connecting to a Scottish soul

When the mowers came and crossed its path
I would find them butchered among the grass
And pause to examine just how tender
This vulnerable, this seemingly iron-clad plant

Touch-me-not, better left free, for one cannot hold
The prickly beauty to one's breast nor remain unharmed
If enticed by its charm to grasp its prickles and thorns
When cut it quickly dies, thus you must love it from afar.  

I know people like that
My desire remained strong and I have longed
Merely to be near this wild ephemeral creature
For the air is sweetest where the thistle grows.

Rare and unusual even among the ill,
Neurosis and psychosis wrap around him
Like a warm, protective blanket.

Thwack! upside the head, "Hello!"
Reality is calling on deaf ears.
The knock never loosens nor
dislodged the blockage in them. He is
Building his life, if only in his own mind,
Second by second, wake to sleep, day after day;
Serving to preserve this foggy unreal thinking.

A magical sort of twilight within continually twinkles.
And a crafty, but ill and calculating brain remains
Though truth slaps him in the face, again and again,
Even as he lives in his own cocooned mind.
The reality within the reality which he continues to create
Is so much work on the part of his many lifetime enablers
But it is all too little effort by him for anything but himself.

You were a wild, tortured soul
It would take a warrior to tame
The beast that lodged within you

And so I fought in full-battle gear
Until I could not go on and lay down the sword
My armor had dropped off year after year

Until I was naked before all, defeated
Now you are dead my love,
But not by my hand.

I arrived in the pouring rain,
Still, I don't want to forget
Not one single thing.
How on that radiant day
Hearts throbbed and overflowed.
It is then that we came to know
What it means to love.

I love you beyond the moon
Beyond the stars

Beyond all reason
Beyond any metaphor

Which I could create
And then I love you still

Beyond the body and mind
Limits set not by man, but God

On and on, and yet more
Beyond time, tide, shores

Then, my darling, I love you
Beyond these boundaries

And back again.