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

She's one of those delectable girls
Or do I mean a lady?
One of those whom,
Once seen is adored despite
One's best endevaours,
Absolutely gorgeous
Yet also truly beautiful with that light
That burns from deep within,
Blazing out from eyes that dance in merriment,

She is one of those who
it's hard to deny in anything
Even that which she doth not request,
Bringing out a puppy-dog desperate
Desire to please which
In another would give rise
To derision but which here somehow
Seems but meet and just,

She is one of those alas which
No ardent fisher of girls will readily catch
Nor display in the face of others envy
On their arm,
For she has a power of all her own
Which cannot be controlled
Or captured nor yet turned to
The desired otcomes of any but her own

So she is yet another ship to pass in the night,
Mayhap to come alongside or
To sail briefly in company
Before suddenly,
As if swallowed by a fog or darkest night
To be no longer there nor seen
Even with the careful search of scopes
As if she never were

You will not
Feebly try to waft
My attention away,
Nor use inebriant half no's
To divert mine intent,
No slack jawed half closed unfocused
Gaze will look searching
My face from a haphazard pillow,

For I will not permit That easy excuse,
Nor will I be a
Half memory or an
“Oh that happened - again"
There will be no groggy awakening
Thick with the night before's effect
To face a morning guilt or shame,
Oh no...
Not this time,

This time amidst
The trees and dark
Your every sense
Will know the path We tread,
And not by map nor memory,
For none before ever felt like this,
And there are no maps on page or screen
That show or describe the delicious
Delight of our destination,

So all unknown Dreamed half of,
Yearned for in
That sense of "there must be more",
And here it is,
Alive and true and happening not in a screen near by
But you,

A you who is free
Of alcohol and drug,
A you who's mind is clear,
A you who is party to what may follow,
A you who adores not endures the
Anticipation the foreplay
And the game
Above all a you who takes full part,
Who says yes because she's asked,

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

Is way too short and small
A word to describe
How I found myself
Just now

I whom nothing fazes
Just ran into a door,
My heart and pulse
Erratic in extreme

And my mind a whirl
Of "oh good Lord"
And "what have I done?"
And more especially "WHY?"

Yet having shared that
I always dare a dare
And having dared myself indeed
What other course remains

But to jump right in
With two left feet
And await the splash
However big, however brash

The response may be,
Yet softness and shyness
Ruled the day today
And no taunt did pierce my heart

Which oddly for all my
Determined non investment
(And there is a word indeed!)
Was quaking at the impending response,

It's odd how things creep up
When you least expect and
Worse the grip they seize
Too late to be removed,

Yet this surprise has
Been a minor joy,
A healing for a torn heart
And a forward looking

Ray of hope

Once armoured and indeed
Once a fearsome tank
Of a man,
I strode across the battlefields
Of my life
Swatting trouble from the skies
Like flies from a sweaty face

No more bothered by trouble Than by a bluebottle
A man of certitude and confidence,
Capable of rising to meet and beat whatever
Life threw at me,

However it seems that love
Has become mine undoing,
My Achillies heel has been mine heart
And mine heart is breaking in pieces,
No more able to pump the blood
I need to live this life
About my walking corpse,

And so I'm shucking my armour,
The plate falling with a muffled thud
Upon the grass as each leather strap is loosed,
So strange to feel lighter as my
Weakness grows greater
And mine ending draws
Ever and certainly closer

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

That I too decided to end my life,
And a fascinating process it was,
Or is indeed - who knows?
(Like a scout it is good to be prepared)

For first there was method and,
Applying that six step process I have so often taught,
I have to decide how long
Should the process take?

I do not wish to exit in pain
Nor rage or humiliation,
But calm and at peace with my choice
And with my action,

Maybe not a firearm then
For in emergency time slows and surely
The blast and rendering of face
And skull must hurt

So the same with hanging,
That sickening drop and
Thence to dangle as darkness gathers
And my bowels empty

So with dignity then,
These things matter after all
And this way at least I have control
Of these important details,

Poison?
Now there's a thing but
Poison is inimical to life,
So how might it feel to die
Destroyed that way?

The plot thickens as
The form of exit desired takes shape,
Comfortable and unafraid,
No pain

But concious to the very end
And so a warm bath,
A drink or two,
And feeling the lethargy

As my blood  pours
From my wrists,
The darkness is coming now,
It's harder to type
my focus is dim
it dark
i think im leavignow
bye

No drink nor drugs
No fog nor *****
This time,
No feeble wafting
Or barely stated
"No" nor "please"


No victim yielding
Passive acceptance
This time,
No waking slow
After the fact
The ****,

No sense of being
Used in absence,
Your body spread
And penetrated
While your mind
Was far away

This time awake,
This time Participant,
This time giving
That well used yet still
Functionally ****** part


This time to feel
Every scrape of fabric lost,
Every embrace,
Each caress,
Every fingers touch

Upon private skin
That never felt
So alert so alive
So aching to be
Enjoyed
Provoked

And no pretence
This time,
There is no innocence nor
Excuse that's worth
The name

For this is you
And this is us
And we both know
The rules of this
Fine game

So thus are you
Woo'd
Seduced,
Deliberately stepping in harms way

Yet safe as your mind
Wanders again but
A different way,
A way of awareness and delight

Til finally that release
And surrender by
Conscious will,
That step across the edge of reason

That fall craved fully
Half a century
Comes finally
Home to roost

I see the fire within your eyes,
The smouldering passion and threat
Within your soul and
I blow gently,
Feel the heat blaze
White hot with that desire
Which I would quench

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.

I have tried all my life to be
Bold and effective
And invisible in equal parts,
Quietly and without fuss
To help others,
To assist everyone I can in this life
Without recognition or tan-ta-ra

But it seems I have been rather too good
With my wand because
Nobody sees these things
That I do,
Well some do but of those
Some see in order to criticise,
Others just pour scorn,

For who indeed am I to offer
Help to others when I have
Nothing worth to give?
And when I point mute at the worth
I have indeed procured,
It's coincidence or their own effort,
No facilitation of mine!

Perhaps it's time for one last
Magic trick then,
A final swan song
Played to an empty theater,
To sail as oft imagined and written of
In that small boat to the sea's far horizon,
And make myself

Truly

Disappear

My nan died in 2005
And I inherited a money plant,
The last living possession
That she had,
And I have treasured it,

Yet despite my care
It was burned by the sun
And almost died,
Reduced from ten inches
Of shiny green health
To a stub from which
The last two leaves dropped,

Dead

But I changed the soil
And replanted those leaves,
Pressing them into the
Moist fresh dark compost,

And slowly,
Banned from interference
By those who revile me,
Those precious leaves
Have rooted,

They stand now upon a tiny stem,
Lifting themselves off the dirt
A shiny new leaf forming,
Determined to stretch skyward

And so with us.
We may be tired and weary,
Fed up with the war,
The rows,

But we have in fact
Changed OUR soil,
This compost is nutritious,
Supportive and healthy,

We can grow in this,
Love is enough because
It has all the good it needs,
The bad has been cut away

I get that your fingers
Are not green,
I feel your weariness,
So lean on me while

I continue weeding,
And soon and very soon,
We will reap a bumper crop
Of all we each deserve

There is an embrace hanging
As yet unenacted,
A smouldering aching yearning thing
That burns and writhes and
Demands to be born into reality

An embrace that promises so much
Yet threatens more and with equal vigour,
Turns a world upon its head yet
Fills a need so completely
And quenches an aching heart

Our eyes meet across a crowded room
Or one where none but we are present or
Perhaps it is one and the same place,
That same room
Whence distractions of others melt,
Dissolving from our awareness

We circle in a literal and figurative manner,
Closing the gap
Two predators aware of the other's thought,
Intention and indeed desire,
Prowling in ever more certain cirlces as to the
Evenings inevitable closure

Then later when the killing is done
And all predatory passion is sated,
The post coitic
Post feasting lethargy sets in,
We stretch and yawn ,
And sleep

From the perspective
Of improvement I can see
That there was a lot of
Darkness in me,
Or mayhap more an absence
Of light,

I am not,
Nor ever have been
A bad man,
But I have done many bad things
And things of which
I am ashamed,

I have lived in fear
And under the accrued
Accretion of a life lived
Thoroughly most surely,
If not always really
All that well,

Like a boat left too long afloat,
With a hull encrusted
With barnacles
And **** such
That good sailing is but
An impractical dream,

But now I have careened my life,
Hauled myself over on a beach
At low tide and scraped
My bottom clean,
Painted with the antifoul of faith
And returned myself to the builders spec,

You may not notice
The lack of ****,
The absence of barnacles or
My changed behaviour,
And thats okay,

You will however,
Even through your judgement,
Lack of forgiveness
And self important rage,
Notice most particularly

That I am gone

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?

Sweet honey drips from
Perfectly manicured fingers,
Yet neither of us sees
That golden sweet glistening,
Nor the the intensity with which
I gently **** each digit with ritual focus
Until it is clean,
We neither see not because
We are either blind
But because our eyes are focussed
Each upon the other's
And thereby upon the other's soul

...the *** or the cuddles that I recall,
Not those that made it for me more than
Just a fling,
Although those were fun
(Don't get me wrong because they were!)
They were but passing bouts of
Sweaty indignity however good we either
May have been

No,
What made it great were those gentle,
One might almost call them shy,
Moments of shared intimacy,
Shared sense or wonder,
Appreciation together of something else,
Outside of us yet by being shared,
Defining us,

Those shared things,
Those fragile moments so
Easily scoffed about are and were
What made us great you and I,
When we were us,
When we were paired
In history ,

So very long ago...

I looked in your eyes
And I saw in your soul
The passion and colour
Of unquechable fire and
Unplumbable depths
And I,
I jumped,
Feet first,
Into wild abandon

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

Inevitable our end and we
Know not when our individual
Light will fail,

But just as a candle flame is
Threatened by every breeze
So too that thread

My life hangs upon is
Subject to parting by any one
Of a hundred stresses

And sadnesses,
Yet I feel intuitively mine
End is coming fast,

The devil offers more for
My soul each passing day
And yet

I say him nay,
But I know what haunts
My body and my mind,

If not by name or label yet
I know that it is here
And so quite soon

I feel my flame
Will soon
Be out

The brief smoke of my
Snuffing carried out of
Knowing by a breeze

That I will know nothing of
As I will be
Elsewhere

How many precious
Moments have we
Shared you and I,
Circling one another in
Lives semi linked in friendship?

How many looks matched
With almost physical violence,
One gaze crashing into the other
One soul's glazing
Locked upon another

Then smashed asunder
As concious thought returns
And proprietary mores
Wrench back control
From softening hearts,

How many of these over the
Years we've known?
I know not yet even as I half
Think these lines our souls
Link again

So this is what desperately
Sad feels like,
Not a harsh dynamic
Jabbing pain,
No explosions or clashing swords,
Just a semi sleepless night
And a waking
Full of realisation and
An awful cloying
Mass of futility,
A physical pain clamped
About the heart,
Enough to recall
My heart attack,

Well maybe so,
The pain is ramping
So maybe heart broken
Is not just a token phrase
This time

Is not a word yet
It's a concept I new discovered
Since I met you
And since you met me,

You with your inscrutability
And Google-augmented English,
Me with my heart on my sleeve
And all Google Korean

Yes it's true
That language matters not yet
I never communicated so hard nor
I feel so well before,

Hours I have spent in your company
Leg pressed to leg in coach
And selfies shot in so many
Valued experiences

And soon you will be gone,
Perhaps forever,
Perhaps to return in Spring,
Perhaps to seek leave to remain,

Who knows but I do know
I hope this friendship or relationship
Or whatever it may be,
May indeed be and indeed continue

In whatever form,
Because for whatever worth it has
And for whatever difference it makes
I find myself more than fond of you

Im once bitten and thirty times shy
Yet here you are inside
My aegis and I?
Well I quite like it!

And there it is
That slap that we discussed
And was said would never come,
A stinging roundhouse
***** of a thing
That even half expected still hurts,

Is it the stinging pain that hurts?
Or the attendant change of heart
And the failure to hold to
That hard won learned
Body of knowledge and
A system of belief?

Believe me I am big enough
A straight on punch with a closed fist
Is going to be absorbed
And then be reacted to,
Counter struck
And then followed by attack

But in this I cannot,
Will not counter nor attack
For this is not a fight
That I desire and neither is there a victory
Nor a war to be won,
Just sadness at losing

Once again

And so the lightning  
Has lost its malleable nature
And the need to be tucked in
Has faded,

I know longer see what is needed there,
Which way the spike should point
Or where or how to redirect
To better end,

I see just how much sleeker
And better fit is the
ball of natural energy that
Previously I did mould

And watch it dart away
Upon its own way
Independent and angry
Beyond my help

Exiting my aegis
For pastures new
Wherein I play no part
But to hold my cheek and check a tear

To feel that slap
The ache
The smart

"Come hither" she said,
"I'll honey my fingers to aid your decision"
And of course I came
Because she asked,
Would have come crawling
On my bare **** through broken glass
Had it been necessary,
But it wasn't and the oddest thing is
She will never know she did not need the honey,
Just to crook that index finger and
Of course,
To smile

How sweet it is
To watch  the disruption
Of my slightest touch
Upon a knee,
A wrist
A hand
A thigh,
That fractional loss
Of coherent thought
Engendered by what may have been
But accident,

How delicious to extrapolate,
To sense the nascent effect of
More overt intervention,
A palm slid gathering
A skirts material,
Or lips insistence upon
Goosebumped flesh,
Even as the conversation
Carries on all innocent
Above the surface yet,
How very
Very
Guilty underneath

And so again things come to close,
That which started hesitantly
Yet in hope
Just like that begun
In high expectation
And in confidence,

Like that subtle switch from summer
Into autumn
With the knowledge of an
Incipient winter
Which cannot be dodged,

I feel the change from
Convergent through
Parallel to now just
A little divergent,
And the first glint
Of clear water between,

I feel an oh so familiar ache
In the knowledge
Of that change,
That loss,
The passing of someone and something
Highly valued,

And I feel

Inestimably

Sad

I wonder if this might be
The last,
Indeed most certainly it has been the best,
The greatest leg up,
The final boost to better
That I perform,

So much history overcome,
So much pain,
Such loss and sadness,
Such tragedy incarnate
Across so many years
It scarcely may be borne

By my shoulder,
Nor mopped by my soul's
Sponge no matter the trying,
Yet slowly now we see
The change,
That change sought so long,

And even as that change rises,
Even as hope and happiness
Reach self sustainment,
I fail in equal measure,
Slowly and inexorably
Fading away,

No longer blazing,
But burning,
Sputtering,
Failing,
An ember,
Gone.

Its the silence that Gets me most
Of all,
The lack of,
The void no longer filled by,
Well - you!

You crept beneath
My radar so I never
Saw you coming,
And now that
Not seeing,
That absence of view
And hearing,
Sod it that absence
In every sense,
All six in fact for
We both know the width
And depth
And power of
Our interactions,
Well,
That blindness is ****** awful!
And I thought you should know

My archetypes are strong,
Indeed have always been,
But how very out of whack they are!

For I have the Lover's sorrow,
Oh boy DO I!
The yellow dawn of
My lover has known no bounds,
Loving oh so very well,
Yet also so very very much,
And contrary to my promise,
I HAVE taken so very much
So very personally,

Talking of bounds,
My scarlet Warrior never heard of such,
Certainly never observed any
As I crashed raging through lives -
Others as well as mine own -
Yet for all the dynamic charging
And lack of regard,
Doing my honourable best,
Albeit that which suited me,

And thence from the dark
Comes my Magician,
Swathed in black and the shadows
Of a thousand thousand fears,
Machiavellian and mysterious,
Bending wills and manipulating
Hearts and minds and souls
To mine own ends while
Making no assumptions,

But whispering too in the ear
Of my joyful Sovereign,
Stood proud in blinding white,
Balancing the three servants,
The kingdom and
The excesses of those others,
Making of me the best
That I can be,

For when all is said
And all is done,
My word
Remains,
My bond.

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,

Night falls without word
Of man nor word from thee
To me,
We have differing views
On contact you and I,
Contact between partners,
Contact between friends,

Conversation about what passes
Betwixt each of us
And any other,
Although you're prompt
To interrogate about clients
Which I understand given
Our past,

But as partners we have
Yet to settle on a path that
Permits us easy conversation
On anything and anyone,
And that loving trust
To which I for one do yet aspire
And we for two do need,

But we shall get there because
I shall not balk at the
Difficult subjects,
Nor turn away lest your
Rage arise again for
If it does then it must and
Its every demise will draw us

Closer