She dangles her beautifully manicured fingers
Languidly in the stream
Honey glazed and luscious
They draw fishes from
Far and wide
And she revels in their
Cute and ineffective
Nibbling

But she does not realise the darker allure
Of the sweetness trailed
From her red nailed fingers,
Nor the strength of the
Instinct to eat nor the rage
Inherent in the nibbling
Of that ticklish little-mouthed
Scrabbling,

But there are bigger fish in deeper seas
With bigger muscled flesh
And larger mouths full of
Sharper teeth,
She seems unaware of the
Attention her honey and her digits
Cause in the depth nor
The rising leviathan

Until suddenly the nibbling stops
As smaller fry take flight,
The sunny day loses
Its warmth and the scene is set
For a different ingestion
As warm and red and sticky blood
Now trails from sudden severed fingers
No more to be dangled anywhere,

We meet in work
And in social context and always wear
A mask to suit the situation,
A mask however which
While showing to the outside world
The image we desire does not
Conspire to cover our eyes which burn
With our soul’s lust and purpose.
So you see me and I see you and the
Masks serve no success in hiding,
Yet would you meet me alone outside
The known and
Lay the mask aside or
Lay indeed
With me?

Trust is my drug of choice
Secrets the pills I take,
Seduction is my favourite thing
Or perhaps it is the engineering of
mine own seduction,
How sweet to be hunted because
One desired it and therefore made it so?
Yet justice says that once seduced
I owe a deep sating of desire the like
Not known before,
And that part also
I can do

Our eyes speak volumes
That our mouths never say
Though our bodies ache to hear or feel,
We circle polite yet yearning
Until one day that perfunctory polite embrace
Lasts a few seconds longer than ought
And holds a few inches closer,
You feel my body’s strength,
I feel yours succumb
But then we break and there is one more
Unacknowledged sharing which
Neither can now unknow

You crossed the line my friend,
After a lifetime of doing what you would
Without fear of reprisal,
To whoever wherever whenever you wished,
You crashed into my orbit
And hurt one of mine,
One who I happen to care about,

They say that what goes around
Comes around and I do not
Doubt you have given lip service
To that exact phrase
And thought nothing of it
Let alone seen in
It your own demise

But those words are true and
Tonight they come home to roost,
You hurt one of mine yet felt so safe,
This time though what comes
Is tall and bald and bearded and bad
And tonight you creep,
You die

I see you,
You are my friend
And have been for so very many years,
And no more no less the precious for
What we never were

Yet in that space between
Awake and sleep,
Where dreams or is it reality
Intrude
I see another truth

I see a time where we are one,
Where we share so much
More than this oh so precious
Ship of friend
For which I would gladly die,

Yet on wakening we are still that
One true company of two,
One great and decades lasting platonic love,
Each the other's partner's lack of choice
For we come each with the other

Should I awaken in the other world
Where we a couple are,
I do not know that I would willingly lose
What we have earned upon this plane,
So I turn over, smile,

And doze again

I came ashore to socialise,
To mix with those who
Have never seen the sea
Or an ocean's far horizon

I came to see what the
Fuss was about,
But found a grubby filty
***** race scrabbling

In their cities to earn
A crust or raise new
Grubby ***** versions
Of themselves,

And every step was as the
Tales have told,
An agony for me,
So what was made it worth that pain?

Well I met you and although
You were nor ever would
Be a person of the mere,
I loved you with a shoal's passion

But you proved fickle and
You proved false,
Betrayed and denied my love
And so I return with my broken heart,

To who I'm meant to be,
Shrug off my shoes and
Flick my tail,
As I return to sea.